Navigating Transferhood: Everything Will Be Okay

It’s my first term at the University of Virginia, but my second year of college. I transferred from Union College, a small school in upstate New York, for academic and financial reasons. Somehow, though, instead of moving closer to my home in Colorado, I ended up even farther away. Transferring is daunting—one moment, you think you’ve found your forever home; the next, you’re in an entirely new place without the comfort of orientation groups or the first-year experience to help you make friends, register for classes, or find housing. I hunted everywhere for guidance but found that information for transfers was, to say the least, lacking. 

“I feel very alone and as if I don’t belong at this university. I have no friends and no one to talk to,” writes U/Affectionate-One8834 in a UVA Reddit post. After committing to transferring, I combed through dozens of similar posts describing the so-called “Transfer Loneliness”—a modern epidemic I was more afraid of catching than COVID. Post after post detailed the struggle to make friends, keep up with grades, and connect with faculty. I could hardly find anyone who’d had a good experience, and, having just submitted my deposit, I was horrified.

But I’m here to tell you: it’s not as hard as everyone says. Is it challenging? Absolutely. But so are plenty of things—like making your bed every morning or connecting a Roku to UVA’s WiFi. Yet you do those things anyway, and you do them well. What I would have given for someone to sit me down and simply say: “It’s not as hard as everyone says. Just keep trying.” What would I have given to make myself believe it? I didn’t believe it at first, but I repeated it to myself like a mantra until I finally began to believe it. We hear it all the time—everything will be okay—and even if that doesn’t erase the pain or fear we feel now, it helps lessen the weight of it.

I loved Union College and anyone who’s talked to me knows that. The faculty were amazing—supportive and invested. Classes were small, engaging, and intimate. And the people? Funny, brave, and open to connecting with everyone. They partied hard but never stopped working. I had a family and a home there, and leaving wasn’t my first choice. 

When I first got to UVA, I found myself constantly comparing everything to Union. Everytime you leave something behind, it leaves a hole in you. It will heal—if you let it. But I couldn’t. I’d go to that place in me, digging through remnants of my happy past as if to remind myself that I was once happy so maybe that meant I could be again. Things will get better, but only if you stop picking at the hole. Let it stay inside you, and leave room to let UVA create a new one in you. . 

Here’s the truth: things weren’t nearly as perfect as you remember them, or else you wouldn’t have left. When regret starts to creep in, and it will, learn to trust yourself and believe that the decision you made with what you had, is one you would make again. Our brains are hardwired to pick a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven.  That doesn’t mean you weren’t happy; it just means you need to ask yourself: “Do I miss that time because it was good or because it was familiar?” The answer doesn’t matter; what matters is that you’re asking the question. 

For me, it was both. Union was the happiest year of my life, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t ever be happier (or just as happy) again. That happiness had taken a year to build, and I realized I could build it again: friendship, connections, extracurriculars, and a life. Next time you find yourself idolizing the past, force yourself to actually choose a specific date when you felt everything was “perfect.” Figure out how long it took you to get there and set a countdown to when you’re there again.

I have mine on a widget on my iPad so that it’s the first thing I see in class or at work. But happiness isn’t something that just finds you on a warm day in spring; you have to seek out the seeds to plant in the fall. Try to think of five things each day that make you happy to prove to yourself you’re getting there. If nothing comes to mind, come up with five things that can make you happy tomorrow. How will you know you’ve made it? You’ll be in bed, scrolling on your phone, realizing that you have too many things, people, and events to choose from when making your list. 

Maybe my life won’t actually be perfect in 150 days; after all, it wasn’t truly perfect last year either. But that countdown is a physical reminder that I can build a life I love. Things might get better way before that, or maybe even after, but keep the widget anyway. Let it count down whether you believe in its prophesying power or not. Let it sit in front of you every day, every hour, as a physical reminder of the one thing you need to keep going: everything will—eventually—be okay.