Over the summer, I decided to transfer from Denison University, commonly referred to as "the hill" by its students due to its location on a beautiful hill in a small town in Ohio, to a branch campus of The Ohio State University because OSU offers more majors, and I need variety when it comes to deciding what I want to do for the rest of my life. I wrote for The Odyssey at Denison, and I loved it, so I decided to write for OSU! I cannot explain how ecstatic I am that I have this opportunity again.

As a freshman, I went to Denison knowing only a few people who lived close to my hometown, and I left at the end of the school year with a few very close friends who do not live very close to me. Despite the distance, however, we still have a close bond. Even though I had great friends, went to a great school on a super beautiful hill, and found a church close by that I absolutely adored, something was missing.

Denison helped me to build character through the trials it handed to me. Even though I had fun at Denison, my time there was more limited than the other students' times. I made the best out of bad sleeping situations by learning and realizing that it is possible to stay up until 5:00 A.M. doing homework and make it on time to an 8:30 A.M. class that very same morning. It was normal for me to decline an invitation to going out with my college family so that I could either recharge or do homework, and it is normal for anybody to do the same.

I came out of my freshman year knowing that even though Denison is a university of which many people I know speak highly, it just was not the right fit for me, and that is completely okay! I am not ashamed to say I gave it a shot and did not graduate from this school. In fact, I am proud to say that I was a Denisonian for a year because it gave me the chance to learn a little bit more about life and what it means to be a friend, a sister, and a part of a squad of friends.

After the rough year had drawn to a close, I made the decision to transfer, and the decision felt obvious to me. While I enjoyed my time on this hill, I realized I would be better off going elsewhere. The hardest decision was deciding which school I wanted to attend. After hours of research, crying, and starting applications that I would never finish, I finally got the nerve to ask my mom about OSU's branch campus that is about forty-five minutes away from my house. When we visited, I knew right away OSU was the right school for me because I could see myself on that campus for the next year before being required to complete my degree on the main campus.

I starting thinking about Ohio State during the beginning of June as I recalled myself often lying in my dorm room and catching myself thinking what it must be like at OSU, specifically main campus. I suddenly realized that those huge boys on the T.V. screen playing football when I was little are now practically as old as I. That thought made me frequently wonder what it would be like to be friends with one of them or even just be in a class with one. I realized that even though none of them came close to Craig Krenzel, a former OSU quarterback, and his strikingly good looks to my four-year-old eyes, it would still be really nice to have the opportunity to become close friends with some of them.

Prior to transferring to the OSU branch campus, I knew it was okay not to like Denison well enough to stay for three more years. However, through the process of transferring, I learned that it is completely normal for students to move after their first years, and I know several people who made the decisions to transfer. Those people helped me through my year at Denison and encouraged me throughout the process of moving to a different school. Had it not been for the love and support of all of my family members and friends, I'm not sure where I would be in terms of my education right now.