What it’s really like being a Transfer student

When I made the decision to transfer schools, I went through a flurry of emotions. I was excited to see where this new chapter in my life was going to take me, but I was also frightened and upset with myself. I had known what I wanted to be when I grew up for as long as I could remember, and with deciding to transfer to UVA, that dream was no longer possible for me. Even with knowing this, I decided to make the commitment to attend UVA in the fall, and since then I haven’t looked back.

I thought that the hardest thing about being a transfer student would be getting into the school – it turns out that this part of the process was by far the easiest. Waiting to hear the decision was down right torture, but getting that acceptance letter was so validating. I knew that I was going to be at a school where I could grow and be a better person.

The real hard part of transferring came when the semester started. Being a third year I knew I was going to have challenges meeting new people and wiggling into already formed friend groups, but surprisingly it was not as bad as I had anticipated. People were friendly and it truly seemed like everyone was open to making new friends.

Getting involved was difficult at first, I kept hearing over and over from people that I just needed to “put myself out there”, as if I had just been sitting on the couch waiting for a social life to just fall in my lap. I tried getting into many clubs, and sadly faced rejections to almost all of them,  but once I was accepted into one club, I found that others seemed to fall into place.

Choosing classes was a whole different story – without any guidance or instruction I struggled to learn the frustrating systems of SIS, Lou’s List, Collab and Course Forum on my own. I just began picking classes that I thought I could potentially need without checking who the Professor was, or even what the class required.

When you are a third-year transfer student you are not assigned an academic advisor until you declare your major, which for most, is not until after your first semester. This means that for every question I had regarding a major, courses to take, or forms that needed to be filled out, I was left on my own. I understood that having been at a four year University prior to transferring that it was understood of what was expected of me here, but there was no way for me to know the ins and outs of UVA before I had arrived.

Perhaps one of the saddest parts about being a transfer student is that you are always considered a transfer student which isolates you to an extent. There is a sense of being an outsider because you did not get to go through the bonding moments that others did.  You don’t receive a class t-shirt like your fellow classmates at orientation, you don’t get the experience of making friends in your first years dorms, and you don’t get the grace period for common mistakes like getting lost, using incorrect terminology or singing the Good Ol’ Song wrong.

While we may not have been able to receive those experiences here,  there is something so special about being a transfer student. We get to have more than one college experience, make more life longs friends, participate in different traditions and learn more about ourselves than we thought we could.

Through all of the struggles of being a transfer student you learn to grow and be adapt, you stand on your own two feet much  more than you did before. Going away to college is a learning experience for everyone, but restarting in the middle of your college career is a challenge that only a few dare to take.

Even through all of the hardships of being a transfer student, there is still no decision that I am more proud of making. Being a Hoo means more than learning how to use SIS or having an advisor, it means being apart of something that is bigger than yourself. Deciding to come to UVA was one of the hardest and best decisions that I have ever made. I may have doubts about it sometimes, but then I realize that while being here I have met so many amazing people who have truly changed my life for the better, and I can’t imagine never having met them.