When I was younger, I never considered myself to be much of a quitter. In elementary school I auditioned year after year for the annual play, and despite the fact that I spoke just about as loud as as a mouse and was never cast in any significant roles, you'd never catch me resigning to the audience. In high school, I spent all four years as part of the mock trial committee, despite my hatred for public speaking and my lack of desire to ever become a lawyer. I also played field hockey, which was clearly not my forte, but I stuck with the JV team.

Then college happened, and everything changed. Since my undergraduate career began I have gained a reputation for being somewhat of a serial transfer student. In the past two years I've been to three different schools, lived in three different states and studied three different majors. Now that I've finally settled down at Elon, I've had to come to terms with what my college experience has become. If you have transferred schools in the past or are considering doing so, just know this: change is essential. Either you change your surroundings or you change yourself -- sometimes both. Whether you move to a new place every semester or you've stayed at the same school since you were a wee freshman, whether you're content with your experience or not, college is a period of constant change.

I can't tell you whether or not transferring schools is a good idea for you. It took me months to make these decisions for myself. What I can tell you is that your college years will be really, really short and fleeting, and that most of it depends on what you make of it (the operative word here is you - not your parents, your professors or your friends, but you). I think that a lot of the time people view college as one distinct chapter of your life, but in reality, it might be many more than that.

Sometimes I wonder what my college experience would have been like if I had gone to Elon all along. I'll never know, because that is not what happened. Here is what did happen: I made a lot of mistakes and went through rough patch after rough patch, but in the end it all worked out, and today I am so much better for it.