January 6, 2017, 11:45 PM: I pull up the Wellesley homepage and click on MyWellesley. Staring back at me is the letter, demanding that I accept your admission offer and commit to attending Wellesley or decline. I pull up the full letter and click on the drop down menu. Am I going to choose Wellesley, committing to moving in two weeks and two days later? Or am I going to take another semester off or return to Middlebury?
It’s been a month and one day since I received my acceptance letter, and two days since I received my financial aid package. I’ve talked to the dean of transfer admissions on the phone earlier in the day, and gone over and over my choices with my therapist, family and a few friends (but not Middlebury friends yet because I can’t bring myself to make the possibility of leaving Midd that much of a reality). I’ve talked to my beloved dean and the world’s best advisor, but all the advice in the world can’t make my decision for me. Every day, I resolve to transfer, feeling sure of my decision -- until three hours later when I start crying thinking about leaving Midd.
At 11:50, I click “accept offer” and put in my credit card information to pay the deposit, really committing to becoming a Wellesley student. This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made.
Two years ago, during J-term of my freshman year, if someone had told me I would transfer two Januarys later, I would never have believed them. I loved Middlebury. I was a tour guide, walking two miles backwards, unpaid, because I loved Middlebury so much that I wanted to convince others to go there. I was excited to go to two hours of Italian 102 every day, and I couldn’t believe how great the friendships I had made so far were. I was so grateful to have found this incredible college, full of passionate students, incredible professors and involved clubs. Middlebury helped me find myself, introduced me to new academic loves, helped me rediscover my love of playing jazz and helped me come to terms with my sexuality. I told everyone who asked that I was incredibly lucky to have landed at such a wonderful school.
Fast forward to today: I am writing this sitting in Lulu, the campus center at Wellesley College, after my first class of the day. I’ll eat lunch with my roommate, another transfer student, later today and then I’ll go to two more classes. Maybe I’ll go into the city tonight, Boston being a million times bigger than the tiny town of Middlebury.
How did I get here? In the last year and a half, my life fell apart and I spent months trying to put the pieces back together. I lost friends, relationships, left the school I had once loved and chose to take a semester off from school to figure out what I truly wanted. I had stopped going to class, quit my extracurriculars and stopped going to the dining hall because I couldn’t be around that many people. My therapist and my dean pushed me to take a leave of absence, to put my life back together, to leave school when I was struggling to survive, let alone thrive. I have cried over all of these losses dozens of times. It took me months to come to terms with the fact that I will never be able to go back to that pure joy of freshman year. All I wanted was to go back, but all I could do was choose the best path forward. For me, that best path was choosing to leave the school I have once loved.
You see, somewhere in the last year and a half, I fell out of love with Middlebury. It became a place of sadness, a place where I felt broken and where so many bad memories ruined my ability to be happy there. I visited in September during my semester off, to get my things out of storage since I had decided to leave school for a semester, and walking around campus, I had a panic attack because of the flashbacks and stress of being there. Even then, I didn’t think I would transfer. But as October rolled around, I thought to myself that maybe I should consider more options. I had already decided to take the path less traveled by taking a gap year in the middle of college, and I thought that maybe I should widen my net again and consider switching schools. I had changed and grown so much in my time off from school, and I didn’t know if Middlebury was my home anymore. I worried that if I went back, I would go straight back to the person I had been in my last year there. And I can’t go back. I have to keep moving forward, one day after another. And ultimately, I decided that the best way to do that would be to transfer. I needed a fresh start, a blank slate.
But transferring is scary. Especially because I didn’t hate Middlebury; once upon a time it was the perfect school for me. I had wonderful, supportive friends, the most incredible dean and advisor, and close relationships with my professors. I was active in the community and loved my major. Deciding to start over again, at a school where I didn’t know a single person and would be starting in the middle of the year was terrifying. I would have to re-declare my major and find a new advisor. I would be entering at a time when everyone would already have friends. In the week that I’ve been here, I’ve questioned my decision every day. I’ve started to tell Middlebury friends, and being here is suddenly making my decision a true reality. I will never be a Middlebury student again. I will visit, and keep in touch with my friends, but Wellesley is my school now. Going back to Middlebury would have been the easy choice, but it would have been the wrong one.
I am a Wellesley sister now, and I could not be happier to be here. I know in my heart that this is the right choice, even if it was a hard one. Thank you to everyone who helped me get here, and to everyone from Middlebury, I will carry you in my heart forever. Middlebury will always be a part of me, a chapter in my story. Here’s to turning the page to a new chapter.
