Of all the aspects of college that people talk about and all the advice given to high schoolers about their freshman year, there’s one that always seems to be glossed over: transferring. Somewhere along the road of your college career, you may look around that the campus you’re on and find that it doesn’t feel as much like home as it did when you first started. Be it due to academic issues, financial issues or personal reasons, the college you start out at your freshman year may not be the one you graduate from your senior year.

For me, the decision to transfer came midway through my sophomore year. It’s an idea I had toyed with for a while, and my decision stemmed from a combination of financial and personal reasons. Don’t get me wrong—I loved and will always love Gardner-Webb University. But by the time sophomore year rolled around, there was just something about the campus that didn’t click with me anymore. It just didn’t feel like being a Bulldog was for me. So I left.

I had spent a few summers on the campus of USC Upstate as a high schooler. It had always felt like home to me and, if they had had my major when I graduated high school, it probably would have been my school of choice. So when I found out that they now offered Exercise Science, it only made sense for me to transfer there. And what I figured would be a simple process turned out to be one of the most exciting adventures of my college career.

I knew going into the process that I might be set back a couple of classes. When going from a private, out-of-state college to a public, in-state college, there are classes that don’t match up. And those that do match up required at least a final grade of at least a C for Upstate to acknowledge them. In my case, I had a couple religion classes and a handful of Gardner-Webb specific “chapel” credits that I knew were automatically going to become elective courses. However, there was some disconnect between my advisors when I arrived at Upstate. I was told that there were at least three general education courses that—although I had passed them nothing less than a B—wouldn’t transfer from Gardner-Webb and I would have to retake them in order to graduate on time. No big deal. I took the classes, I passed the classes, and during my advisement for the spring semester, I found out that those classes had indeed counted towards my degree at Upstate and the classes I had taken retaken in their place were going to be counted as elective courses. This put me in an academically awkward position: on paper, I was going into the spring of 2016 as a senior. However, I was now so behind on taking my major classes that I was academically considered a junior. Yeah. Let me tell you how fun that was to explain to folks who asked, “So, how far along are you in school now?”

And the academics were just the beginning. When I transferred to Upstate in the fall of last year, I barely remembered the campus from my high school summers and I only knew one person: my friend, Jordan, who I graduated high school with. I had to learn how to navigate the campus, learn the best routes to get to and from my classes, learn the best hang out spots and what there was to do around campus and, most importantly, learn how to make friends with groups of people that had been together for two or more years before they ever met me. I was basically a freshman all over again. Except there was no crash course, weekend long orientation this time around. This time, I was on my own. I had a rough, lonely first few weeks. I spent most of my time in my dorm room or the library. Jordan asked multiple times if I wanted him to introduce me to his friends, but prideful stubbornness led me to tell him that I was fine and wanted to make my own friends. I questioned myself multiple times if I had made the right decision in leaving Gardner-Webb. Eventually, though, I decided that making friends at Upstate just wasn’t something I was going to be able to accomplish alone. I accepted Jordan’s offer to meet his friends, and was immediately accepted into their group. Fast forward 10 months and that same group of friends I was so reluctant to meet are now some of my best friends in the world.

Transferring definitely wasn’t the easiest decision I’ve made since I’ve been in college, but it’s without a doubt been the best. Like I said earlier, I still love Gardner-Webb and all the experiences I had there. However, I feel like it was a stepping stone for me; the experiences I had there are experiences I needed to prepare me for college life. The experiences I’ve had at Upstate are what are going to prepare me from the real world.