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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Adelphi chapter.

 

 

I started my freshman year of college as a dorming student at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. In the fall of 2019, I left home to dorm at school only to realize the next semester I would be back home. My dorm had a communal bathroom- which I was not the biggest fan of- but even worse was my roommate. We were not compatible at all and living with her was like hell. All I had ever wanted to do was to go away and live at college, but after that first semester my dreams were slowly crushed. 

 

I started looking for schools on Long Island that I could commute to. I applied as a transfer student to Hofstra and Adelphi, even though I live 50 minutes away. I knew it would be a long commute, but I could still do it. Ultimately, I decided on Adelphi because of their education program. 

 

Coming home wasn’t an easy decision for me; I tried to stay at my first school, but ultimately it wasn’t going to happen. I agonized over the decision to move home because doing it made me feel like a failure. I wanted so badly to live on my own, and there I felt like I couldn’t handle it. Ultimately, I realized that even if I felt like a failure in the moment, this is how things were meant to be.

 

I started my freshman spring semester at Adelphi and was there for a month and a half before the inevitable happened; Covid shut down the school and I was no longer physically commuting to campus. I hadn’t really met anyone or made friends on campus before the closure. I was at this school for a month, I knew no one, and then I was forced to be separated from everyone. 

 

It sucked to have just started at a new school where I had few connections, only to be put in a position where I felt more isolated from the university. Unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to make the connections that I had hoped to because of the pandemic.

 

Being a transfer student is already hard because you are basically starting fresh with a clean state. You have to put yourself out there with new people again and that is even harder when you aren’t even on campus. I feel like I transferred at the absolute worst time, it has been so hard to adjust to a new school given the difficulties of the pandemic. I still feel like I am not connected to the school even though I have been putting in more of an effort to get involved. 

 

I’ve been unhappy with my decision to transfer ever since I started the application process. A part of me wonders what would have happened if I had stayed at Seton Hall even though the pandemic would’ve screwed that up too. But I know that I was meant to transfer despite the personal failure that came along with it. 

 

When the world finally gets back to normal and I can really be on campus, I hope to be involved so I can finally meet and connect with people. I also might live on campus and see what happens from there. I didn’t like living at my first school, but it doesn’t mean I won’t like living at Adelphi- and to be honest, I don’t think I could hate anything more than the 50 minute commute.

Julianne Farrell

Adelphi '23

Julianne is a Senior at Adelphi University. She is a mathematics major in the STEP education program. She is apart of the Active Minds, Her Campus, GSA, and Future Teacher's Association clubs at her university. She likes everything Disney and in her free time likes to write and do photography.
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