I transferred to Brown in the spring of 2012 having just left a small, liberal arts, all women’s college. At that point, the worst part about transferring was the process of leaving behind a home that I had known for two and a half years. I remember the day I first heard that I had been accepted to one of my transfer schools. It was the end of finals and I walked around my beautiful college’s campus in tears, not knowing if I would return or if I would regret my decision. In many ways I felt embarrassed to leave. I didn’t know how to explain to friends that I was leaving while encumbered by a major, and somewhat irrational fear, that they would believe I was saying I didn’t think they were good enough friends. They were, in fact, wonderful people and the school I left was a wonderful place. I even went as far as saving my applications into a creative writing class folder on my desktop in case someone happened to look at my computer (perhaps this was me being a bit paranoid). In part, some of my hesitations to tell people about my future plans came from the stereotypes associated with leaving a liberal arts college for an Ivy League university. I felt that even administrators and professors judged my choice, assuming that I believed one school would provide a better education than the other. (To this day, the creative writing workshops there remain some of my favorite college classes.) Maybe they thought that I hadn’t considered introspectively my needs as I moved forward and made several life-changing decisions within a few weeks, but I really had.
Coming to Brown was scary. As a spring transfer, the 60 or so new students were the only community we had. In some ways, our three day long orientation felt like a massive scramble to make friends, remember names, hometowns, and prospective concentrations that would no doubt be changed within a matter of months. One of the characteristics that separates Brown from many schools in the transfer admission process is its rich transfer community. Many schools accept six transfer students and throw them into a community where friendships and bonds have already formed. Most transfers at Brown come in and form friendships with transfers at orientation that last their time at Brown, many rarely deviating from their transfer group at all.
Transferring is a process that requires courage. Everyone faces unhappiness at some point in their lives, but it seems as though few are willing to confront these problems introspectively. I have always felt that those who face their issues with self-reflection are those who will find success and happiness. Although I feel as though transfers are slightly marginalized at Brown by the pure fact that we did not enter as freshman and have not been here for as long, I think it is this marginalization that enables us to appreciate the community that Brown offers. Even though it may have seemed to those who surrounded me at my old school that going to Brown was an attempt at reaching greatness, I have always felt that actions meant to prove greatness are detrimental to success; rather, it is our actions meant to improve happiness, and a joy in the process that leads to success. I transferred to Brown not for pure reputation, but because I believed that I would grow here. I was right. In the past year and a half I have learned more about myself than I had learned in the first 21 years of my life, and this is because of the people I have been surrounded by. There have been positive and negative experiences here, as there will be at every stage of my life, but each experience has been a learning process. Without the friends I have made at Brown, a group of wonderfully open, honest, and diverse people, I would not be where I am.