Imagining the transition between colleges wasn't so bad. I had been to another state college for over a year. I had been in a sorority. I had made good grades. I had made the best friends and been to the best parties. Imagining the transition didn't seem so hard.
Arriving to UGA, I suddenly felt like a freshman all over again. I was no longer familiar with the campus, I no longer knew everyone, and I no longer felt like a part of the school. Walking around campus suddenly felt like I was lost all over again, except this time I was alone. There are the distant friends that I knew in high school, but haven't seen in years. There is a sorority of over two hundred girls I was supposed to consider my sisters. There is the familiarity of being in college, but everything felt like I was a visitor. I no longer thought of my school as MY school, only as if I was a guest here for a few days.
Everything suddenly feels like a first again. It's the first time you walk into a building, searching for your classroom. It's the first time you look around the room and realize most people are familiar with one another, but they are all strangers to you. It's the first time you walk into the dining hall, trying to work the order out in your head, but it is so different than what you're used to. It's the first time you feel even more lost than a freshman since even they have it figured out by now. It's the first time you go to a tailgate or football game at a new school and don't know all the things you're supposed to know. It's the first time you truly feel all alone.
Not only does it feel like a first, it feels like memory lane all at once. One second you're lost, the next you're hit with all the memories of doing exactly the same things at your last school with your best friends. The emotions wrapped in the new experiences with the pang of angst about everything you're used to suddenly knocks you over. How can something be so similar, yet so alien all at once?
Finding where you fit in to the new puzzle can be extremely difficult. All over again, you're the new kid who isn't quite sure, yet it's the middle of the year. The freshmen are accustomed now, the upperclassmen know the city like the back of their hands. Transferring is a million times harder than one would expect. It hurts, it feels lost and confusing, and more than anything it has that twinge of sadness you can't seem to understand.
Despite all the trials of the transition, you get a fresh start. You get to decide who you want to be and what you want to do again, but this time you have the experience to do it even better than before. Don't expect it to be easy, because it won't be, but it could be the best thing that has ever happened to you.
