At a university as large as Bowling Green, there are always tons of new faces in the crowd at the dawn of a new school year.
Most of these faces belong to wide-eyed, ready-to-learn-about-life freshmen. However, some of the new faces belong to transfer students. As a transfer student myself, I know sometimes we look like freshmen. All too many times since I’ve been here, I have thought, oh boy, do I feel like a freshman right now, since my freshman year is still fresh in my mind.
When people ask me where I go to college I tell them I go to Bowling Green now, that I transferred here after a year at Toledo, but when I actually go to class at Bowling Green I really don’t know where I’m going.
As a transfer, a few things go through your head. The most traumatizing aspect for a lot of transfers is adjusting to a new campus. Right away, when you start attending school on a new campus, it looks as though every building on campus is 10 miles from the one next to it, and every building looks the same. Even if they didn’t look the same, it wouldn’t matter to you, because you couldn’t tell Eppler North from the Taj Mahal. But those of us faced with this dilemma can use our skills acquired from playing a popular childhood game to beat the confusion of navigating around a new campus.
Fortunately, I really loved the game Chutes and Ladders as a child. I never dreamed then that the skills I learned playing this game would help me when I transferred colleges! What does this have to do with college, you ask? Well, to me, being a transfer student at Bowling Green is like a real-life version of that childhood time-passer. Everyone who has ever transferred can empathize with me, I’m sure. We all know the feeling of walking to class, only to realize we’re going in the wrong direction, so we turn around, go back to where we started, and start in the other direction. It’s much like a game of Chutes and Ladders, where you follow the ladders until you end up in the wrong spot, and have to go all the way back to where you started, and begin your journey again.
Every transfer student knows all too well the feeling of leaving your dorm 100 percent sure of where you’re heading for your class. You’ve walked through your schedule, including trips back to the dorm between classes, 10 times. How could you not find the building you’re looking for? So you put your best “I know where I’m going, I know this campus better than most seniors” face on, and head for class. About seven minutes into your journey (since you’re supposed to be able to get anywhere on Bowling Green’s campus in 10 minutes), you start seeing buildings whose names aren’t ones near the building you’re supposed to be in accordance to the map you keep in your back pocket and inconspicuously look at only when you’re sure no one will see you.
Gradually the self-assured look on your face disappears and is replaced by a petrified look reflecting the dismal feeling that has set in since you’ve realized that this wild-goose chase you’ve been on for the past seven minutes will now make you late for class. Even the 25 minutes you left to make sure you got to class on time have been whittled away and you now have only a few minutes to cross campus. Since you have experience with the college, you know your professor is going to give you a nasty look when you guiltily sneak into the lecture hall four minutes after class has begun, and this one episode of tardiness will no doubt put a grudge against you and become the reason why you later on get an F in the course.
Eventually you get through that class, and the professor smiles at you as you walk through the door. You manage to get through the rest of your classes that day, too.
Last week was just the beginning of your new career as a Bowling Green student, and it will get easier. Maybe in a few weeks, you’ll even be able to wear the “I know where I’m going, I know this campus better than most seniors” face, and when you do, it won’t end up disappearing, because you will be 100 percent sure of where you’re going.
