I did, though, following my then-best friend from Livonia to Western Michigan University, only to get homesick and come back a week later to a new puppy my mom swears she didn’t get to replace me. After coming home, I decided Washtenaw Community College was my first path. 

If you’ve never been to community college, you’re in for a treat because you can actually walk around campus in less than 30 minutes. Professors you see at coffee shops will joke with you about your grade going down for accidentally cutting in front of them in line to get a latte, and you may even see one playing guitar at a local bar. 

There wasn’t the “traditional” college experience of living on campus or going to Welcome Week parties. We didn’t have a Spartys, but we had the Student Center, with its greasy pizza that satiated me enough to make it to my 6 p.m. digital journalism class. I didn’t make many friends, but the friends I did make will stay in my life for as long as possible. The hours at WCC were easy to fill, and, like many college students working through school – paying relatively affordable tuition felt manageable.

You may have seen the recent flood of graduate posts this past spring. For a long time, the expectation was to be among them, but not every journey follows the path first imagined. It may not be the path some of you envisioned for yourselves either. Still, there is value in the journey, even when it looks different from what was originally planned.

After coming to MSU, I did the same thing I did at WCC.

I joined MSU's student publication, The State News, as an arts and culture general assignment reporter, covering different aspects of MSU that reminded me of where I had just moved away from. Trips to Celebration Cinema made me think of my sister and our 2024 New Year’s Resolution to review as many movies as we could, no matter how much money we spent on popcorn and Cherry Coke slushies. Attending Wharton events made me think about how much I missed music and theatre, but being in the vicinity was enough to satisfy me. 

A story I wrote after scouring the MSU Reddit sticks with me, though, stemming from a single post about how to make friends as a transfer student. I looked at the post and said out loud, “Ha, so me.”

The comments were full of all kinds of advice, from alumni, people who had been on campus for four years and other transfer students, but there was a need and obligation to hear it from the source. 

After receiving some responses to my post, I chatted with two students who shared what they did when they came to MSU. Our stories are similar, but not quite. If you’re a transfer student, you may feel the same.  

Students said they felt like they didn’t belong when they first got to campus, and it took them a while to consider MSU home after joining clubs, getting their bearings, and taking as many classes as they could. 

But, in the end, they did. We did, and as I go into my senior year, I feel I belong at MSU. 

I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say that it was easy, but for those who are just transferring or have transferred recently, know that our stories started late, but that’s OK. We’ll work it out the way we intend.