Transferring from a local community college to a four year university has been increasing in popularity in recent years due to fee hikes and ease. For some people, it is a viable option and I want to be 100% clear that there is absolutely no shame in that.
Yet, there's a different set of transfer students out there who have a different situation all-together: transfers from a different four-year institution.
Think back to when those college acceptance letters, or in our technological age, emails, came flowing in. The crushing blows of getting rejections and the euphoric highs of schools on your top list giving you that resounding "YES." After endless road trips, pressure from your parents and peers, and thumbing through overwhelming course catalogs, you decide on the place where you're going to spend the next 4+ years of your life. You envision that name with a super high GPA next to it on your resume and your achievements at said University underneath. You picture the girls/guys you've just met in your wedding party as your bridesmaids/groomsmen, and more importantly, your lifelong friends. You walk past and covet that cool looking apartment building or house which you swear you'll live in when you move out of the dorms. You find your favourite Coffee Shop and claim it as your study spot, and you establish a routine of weekend activities. As the Quarters or Semesters roll on, you follow suit and your visions become a reality, until it all changes.
This change doesn't happen overnight, in fact sometimes it seems to come out of nowhere. Maybe it's an illness or some other extenuating circumstance, or maybe it's for financial reasons, but for some reason or another you can no longer stay at The University of Future Accomplishments. Or perhaps everything was NOT as you thought it would be. Your future bridesmaids were nowhere to be found, and you couldn't even comprehend living in this college town. So with some space in between, either at home, a community college, or shortly after your mind is made up the application process begins yet again, and until you are re-validated with that magical "YES" once again, you feel as if you've been put in limbo.
When the wait is over, you seem to go back in time. It's like it's your first year all over again, deja vu of all those experiences. Only this time, you're alone. Everyone else has already found their bridesmaids, their study spot, and they have a list of achievements next to their school name and GPA on their resume that is longer than yours. You overhear conversations and comments about "those transfers" with tinges of contempt in the speakers tone. And when you like the confessions page of your given school, there are plenty of comments, even confessions, about transfer students "lowering the curve" about how transfers "don't deserve to be here" because they "don't work as hard" and many other generalizations about the so-called "stupidity" of people who happened to enter this said school at a year level other than freshman. In turn, you begin to wonder if this is true. Do I deserve to be here? Am I completely out of my element? Will I flunk out and have wasted my time? To which my reply would be: do not wonder, but instead, prove them wrong.
This may be a cliché, but I've found people telling me what I can and cannot do, besides being annoying, to be inspiring. It drives me to do better. What? I won't get good grades because I came here from a party school you say, and I cannot possibly acclimate to the rigor of a higher rated institution of learning? You're entitled to your own opinion of course, but I'll be the first to tell you that you cannot generalize.
Most people do not attend community college because they want to and because it's their life dream, or because they want to take the easy way out. They do so because they were not in a life position to have the privilege of attending a four year institution in the first place. When transferring from Four Year to Four Year, it's a very unique situation and there is often a very personal reason for transferring that should not warrant any judgment or feeling of superiority.
The reality is that education is not a linear process for everyone. For some of us the road from point A to point B had a series of twists and hills going uphill and downhill, and it's OK. So to anyone who looks down upon transfers of all kinds, I ask you re-evaluate your thoughts, and put them into a different perspective.
For transfers who are feeling the brunt of all these comments, self-doubts and so forth, I give you some advice. The advice is simple. Get involved! What made my transition from school to school the easiest was being a member of a National Panhellenic Sorority. It gave me a place to live and an instant connection with girls who oddly enough happened to be very similar to the girls in my previous chapter by a total coincidence. Am I still anxious? Am I still trying to get back on my feet and find the solidity I had at my old school? Of course. Yet having something to look forward to and enrich my day makes it that much better. For me, it was Greek Life, and kick-starting an old hobby of mine, dance. But really, anything on campus can fill the void and satisfy this inner need as a transfer to "catch up." You do not have to feel alone because you don't have the community of a dorm floor to revert back to. So although we at times may feel disenfranchised as transfers, becoming a fully fledged participant on your new campus does not have to be as scary as it is made out to be.
