By Janelle Menard
The title of “new girl” has followed me around my entire life. Once I finished the fifth grade, I was never at the same school for more than three years.
This trend continued into my college career. I spent my first two years at a school that did not really value academics, I learned far too late. It was fun for the first semester, but once COVID-19 hit, I was just flat-out miserable for a solid year.
My mom was the one who suggested the possibility of transferring schools, which I immediately rejected. “Transferring,” to me, equaled giving up, something I strive to never do. It made me think of my cousin, who transferred colleges in his second year before dropping out and never finishing his degree.
(It worked out alright for him – he is now in trade school getting his electrician’s license.)
But my mother, because she’s the greatest woman in the world, pestered me a few more times.
“Just think about it,” she’d say. “Spend an hour poking around the internet. See if you find something that clicks with you.”
She was talking about courses of study to start with. At that point, I had cycled through two majors and had settled on communications, but I still felt more than a little unfulfilled.
So, I did some reading.
I read a lot of job listings for public relations professionals in different industries, and, just as my mom had predicted, it clicked with me. It combined things I was good at and enjoyed – writing, business, marketing, making connections, all that fun stuff.
Then came part two: finding somewhere to study it.
I realized that transferring was the only option. I couldn’t go on at my previous institution. I was paying far too much money for an education that was not nearly worth it.
A few months and a lot of paperwork later, I was starting my first semester at Georgia Southern as a junior public relations major.
I have not regretted one single moment of it. Although being a transfer student has its own difficulties.
Very few of my credits transferred to GS. Luckily, I didn’t have to retake anything like Intro to Journalism or core English or math, but that really is the extent of it. I had to take Principles of Advertising again, extra science classes, even another news reporting class after already having my journalistic writings published in the school paper at my old college.
Oddly enough, transfer students aren’t that unusual here. There is one key difference, though – almost all of them transferred from other schools here in Georgia. When I say I transferred from Chicago, I’m always asked to tell my story. It makes me cringe a bit, remembering the stupid kid who thought going to an arts college in the big city was the best idea for my future.
As you can tell from this long-winded story, it was a bust.
Still, I know that it was an important learning experience. Was going to that school an incredibly stupid mistake? Yes.
Was it worth it as it led me to the major and school that make me unbelievably happy?
Also, yes.