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

For my first year, I went to a community college not too far from my hometown. I always knew I wanted to go to a university for my second year of college. In November 2018, I applied to UNCC and waited a couple of months before I found out I had been accepted in January 2019.

Almost a month of being here, I have discovered many things about being a transfer student. Despite being a sophomore, I still feel like a freshman because I am a transferee. 

I have met so many other transfer students during my first week of class. I felt like I was the only one feeling lonely or overwhelmed being in a place. But when I met other students in the same situation, it made me feel like I wasn’t the only one going through this. I was able to meet so many new friends through this experience. 

Joining clubs does help you get out of your comfort zone. Going to the club organization fair can opens your eyes to many things that you thought you would never do before. It worked for me, but the downside was that I signed up for too many clubs and felt obligated to go all of the meetings. By my second week of school, I was having a mental breakdown, because I didn’t know how to balance my schoolwork and my clubs at the same time. In the end, made three rules for myself.

  1. I want to be able to benefit from the club and learn new things.

  2. Try to get out of my comfort zone.

  3. Pick a club relating to my major.

Time management is a big thing I learned here. Having a planner, calendar, or app that can help you stay on task will help you. I learned that not having your day planned out can lead to procrastination- well, that’s what happens to me anyway. I went on Youtube or asked people around how to manage my time and that was very helpful. Using resources like this might help you to stay on task too!

When I feel lonely or I’m just having a bad day, I always remind myself that things get better, and that my mom is always a phone call away to make things better. That is how I felt the first two weeks at school. But I was able to overcome this wave of loneliness and things did get better for me. So even though it’s just the first semester here I have so many things to learn about and experience!   

Alissa Bouttavong is a sophomore at UNCC and her major is Organizational Communication. She loves reading and going to the movie theaters in her free time.