Unfortunately, I know too well the pros and cons of being a transfer student. I attended a total of three different high schools and three different universities. Needless to say, change promoted many concerns. Never truly being able to find my own niche before being pulled out, never being able to grow alongside newly formed friendships before I was placed in a new building where I knew no one around me.

Being a transfer student has taught me many things about myself and the social mountains I’ve had to climb over. I learned through the process of losing control of my surroundings that loneliness was a mislabeled tool in finding one’s identity.

In my former schools, I could be defined as a wallflower, an observer before performer by extreme means. Attending Radford University transformed my beliefs towards loneliness into a concrete understanding of my identity. During my brief stay, I learned all too well that being estranged, being new, and being unnoticed by no means has negative consequences. I learned how to thrive in my solitude, channel my spare time into building myself up from the roots. I learned how to be a person I could be proud of, I learned how to hold myself up by own boot straps and rely on myself rather than another people’s approval.

We can choose to handle new environments and new dispositions in limited ways. We become overwhelmed, depressed, excited, lonely, or estranged. I took these hurdles of loneliness in altering strides. I choose to discover and define myself in these periods of solitude. When describing my stay at these prior education platforms, I never compare loneliness to dissatisfaction. In these bouts of time alone, I found truth in my own voice. Without the whispers of peers or the need to be affirmed by their standards, I became a woman secure in her own beliefs.

Transferring to VCU was the best decision I’ve ever made. It challenged me to plant the seeds of my future and community, and it’s challenged me to call a place "home." I can happily say that VCU will be the last university I attend. Somewhere in between the hustle of city life, I’ve found serenity, the perfect place for my former wallflower self to emerge unabashed.

The fluidity of belonging to many different schools shaped me into the person I am today. And I am forever grateful for these experiences and the people I met along the way. If anything, I hope others can challenge themselves to start somewhere new, knowing their own strength and identity will keep them safe.