With the midterm season coming to a close and finals season being around the corner, my first semester at UVA is almost coming to an end, so I feel it’s the right time to share my experience here so far!
I transferred to UVA from a community college in Northern Virginia (NVCC) and honestly, there are quite a lot of differences between the two. For starters, I moved out for the first time and this newfound freedom has been nice if I am going to be extremely honest. Though the first day away from home was difficult, I quickly became too busy with all of the first-week events to even think about being sad (my parents also called me multiple times a day to check in lol).
Academic wise, I really enjoy the classes I have had the opportunity to take here! The classes I had in community college were mostly regular gen ed courses, but it’s nice to finally be able to take some major-based classes (and more).
As for my social life, I did my best to join different clubs and organizations, but I did have a pretty hard time finding many people I connected with and could create deeper bonds of friendship with since the majority of the third years I knew already had established friendships. One of the groups that helped me find my place here at UVA was PAFN. It stands for Peer Advising Family Network, and they essentially assign you to an “advisor” and you have co-advisees, similar to bigs and littles. I became super close to my advisor and co-advisees and wouldn’t trade that relationship for the world. Along with them, since my roommates are also transfers, we found that we struggled to find our places in the school the same way, so that made us grow stronger bonds. I still miss my home friends like crazy, but now, two months in, I can definitely say I do feel happier with the new bonds and friendships I made, especially through not just PAFN, but also the Bengali Student Organization as well.
Although I have so many good things to say about UVA, my experience may not be the same as yours if you decide to come here! A small piece of advice: Even if things don’t start off the best, they will even out and get so much better, but you have to TRY to make it better for yourself. I wanted to give up and think that things would get better by itself, but with my experience of not working out in community college, I knew I had to put in the work to get what I wanted. I know it can be difficult to adjust, especially if you are coming in as an upperclassman, so, just branch out and put yourself out there with no regrets! It’s worth it, I promise.
Overall, I have no regrets about my decision to transfer to UVA versus another school from community college! I am really enjoying it here and I hope I can create even more memorable moments for the next year and a half, WAHOOWA!!! :)