This is my final essay for my writing class. If I get an A on it, I get an A in the class. It’s due Tuesday. So…opinions would be welcome. And actually, I’m begging. C’mon people, I’m all alone in my Scribner House, I graduate on Tuesday and I’m going cross-eyed from staring at my computer screen. LJ is going to screw with the formatting, but ignore that.
It’s the first day of my last semester of college. We fill out a questionnaire in my English class. I move through it easily until I get to the question “Why Skidmore?”
Why Skidmore? I think I wrote something on my application essay about seeing Skidmore as the perfect place to pursue my academic and personal goals. Those clichéd words were calculated to earn me admission to Skidmore, and escape from Hampshire College.
“I transferred to Skidmore from Hampshire College,” I scribble. “I’m still not sure it was the right decision.”
“Why did you transfer?” my professor asks.
I want to kill her for asking. She didn’t make anyone else tell the class “Why Skidmore?” I should be well-versed in answering this question, but sometimes, like today, it catches me off guard.
More than two years have gone by since my first day here, but I still cringe at the question “So, why did you transfer anyway?” I guess everyone assumes it’s something simple: that I wanted a different academic program, or maybe I just didn’t like the location of my old school. Usually, I offer an anecdote or two. I tell the story of how at Hampshire, students burned a flag at a patriotic rally held after September 11, and told a girl her sister deserved to die in the World Trade Center; she was supporting capitalism by working there, they argued. Or, I relate that the president of the college (Greg, to Hampshire students) used to smoke up on the quad outside the library. Then I smile and say, “The people there were completely crazy!” The questioner usually accepts my response, and I breathe a sigh of relief that I’ve gotten through another performance.
I never tell them about my first day at Hampshire College. That morning, I drove to campus on Route 116, taking deep breaths to try to quell the inexplicable dread that had crept up on me. My parents and I moved me into E308, a single room on a co-ed hall.
Outside the registration room, I chatted with a shaggy-haired blonde boy about my favorite author, Ayn Rand (“She’s a delusional bitch,” my companion told me), my political hero, Bill Clinton (“He let the liberals down!”), and pot (“You’ve never gotten high?!”) The President’s welcome was made over a TV screen; Greg was in South Africa talking with students about their views on America. The administration decided to broadcast some of this performance to the entire freshman class and when one girl stated, “George Bush does not represent the American people,” the audience erupted into cheers. I agreed with the sentiment then, but in the following months in the most liberal environment in the country, I would find my politics drifting disturbingly rightward.
The questioner wondering why I left one small liberal arts college in the Northeast for another doesn’t know that at Hampshire, I highlighted the important information in each night’s reading, but when I sat in class, I stayed silent. Although the school preached tolerance as its highest virtue, my opinion was meaningless; I was just a straight, white girl from the suburbs. I listened to my classmates’ radical theories of gender development and lists of reasons for why the U.S. and all white people were evil. I learned to hide that I drove a Jetta. “People of color” became part of my vocabulary. I occasionally ate dinner with a few people I’d met at orientation, bypassing the trays full of vegan food in search of a hamburger, but usually I dined on peanut butter crackers in E308.
I refused to listen to the suggestion of transferring. After being indoctrinated with the idea that college is the best four years of your life, I felt as though transferring would be admitting failure. When I returned in the spring, I forced myself into typical college life. I went to my first keg party and tried to find something in common with my hall mates. I joined clubs. I hooked up with the cute new guy on the floor below me.
But one Sunday morning I woke up hung-over and frustrated with my attempts to fit in. Blinking in the late morning sun, I crawled out of bed and sat down at my computer. I typed in the address to Skidmore College’s website. My second-choice school suddenly sounded appealing. The next few months passed in a blur — a flurry of applications, nervous anticipation of an acceptance letter, and constant worry over whether I was making the right choice.
I don’t think any of the inquirers know what it’s like to have to do the first day of college all over again. My first day at Skidmore, I emptied the boxes from my car, and then sat on the bed in my new room, waiting for my dad to arrive with the rest of my belongings. My roommate, Victoria, had arrived on campus two weeks ago for field hockey camp. She had warned me when we spoke over the summer that she was a huge Britney Spears fan, and several posters of her idol were taped to the wall. I could hear the excited voices of freshmen embarking on college life for the first time. I could feel the dread creeping up on me, and I silently pleaded, “Not this again, please not this again.”
My dad arrived outside my dorm an hour later. “Stop being so cranky!” he ordered when I snapped at him. Then, I broke down and cried because my Ethernet cable didn’t reach across the room, and I had forgotten my alarm clock at home.
My dad decided not to sit through a second freshmen orientation. “Relax,” he told me before he left. “And don’t judge anyone for at least six months.”
All the freshmen were clinging to their roommates, but there was no sign of my Britney Spears loving, field hockey playing roommate. The emails we had exchanged over the summer made me think we could be friends, so I was eager to meet her. She breezed into the room minutes before I was about to leave for my second President’s Welcome. “I’m Victoria,” she said coolly. She threw her bag on the floor on my side of the room, and pulled out her cell phone. “Annie?” she asked. “Ohymygod, is the list posted yet? I’m like, sooooo nervous!”
I waited until she was off the phone. “Um, are you coming to the meeting?” I asked.
She must not have heard the question, because she dashed out the door. I walked down to the gym alone.
All the freshmen had an orientation group assignment on their welcome packet. I didn’t. No one seemed to be able to tell me where transfers were supposed to go. I ran into a guy who was asking the same question, gesturing towards his sticker-less folder.
“Are you a transfer?” I asked.
“Yeah, it looks like none of us got group assignments,” he said. “Let’s stick together, maybe we can figure out where we’re supposed to go. I’m Ryan.” He wasn’t wearing tie-dye or Birkenstocks. I smiled genuinely for the first time that day and introduced myself.
Eventually, they hoarded the thirty of us lost transfer students into a room with an insufficient number of chairs. Apparently, sitting on the floor in a circle is an essential part of any college experience. “Now,” our cheerful peer advisor began, “lets go around the circle, and everyone tell us your name and where you transferred from. Oh, and tell us why you transferred!”
There was silence until Ryan mentioned he transferred from Northeastern because he wanted a smaller English Department, and a girl named Ashley volunteered that her school in Manhattan had been too business oriented. Most of us choked on our words.
“I transferred from Hampshire College, because um…I was just not happy with the…community,” I mumbled. “Um, I had a bad freshman year, and Skidmore was my second choice in high school. So, here I am.” Christina, who a few moments ago admitted to the room full of strangers that she’d had a traumatic first year, caught my eye. We exchanged smiles.
When it was time to return to the dorm for residence hall meetings, I looked for Victoria, thinking we could walk back together, but she had already left.
No one who has asked these questions knows that, beyond the unhappiness and loneliness that motivated me to transfer, my biggest concern about transferring was being able to graduate on time. Faced with numerous pesky requirements at Skidmore, I was terrified of having to be on “the Five-Year Plan.”
A few weeks ago a girl in one of my classes asked me what I was taking next semester.
“I won’t be here next semester,” I replied. “I’m graduating in December.”
“Oh, you took an extra semester,” she said knowingly. “Yeah, I’m thinking I may be doing that too.”
“Actually, I’m graduating early.”
“What? You’re graduating early?” she exclaimed. “That’s like, impressive, I guess. I want to stay a college student as long as I can!”
I smiled vaguely at the sentiment, and gave my patented response to the surprise people always expressed when I told them I was ending the best four years of my life early. “Well, I’m saving my parents a lot of money.”
I wonder if any of them know what it’s like when college just isn’t the best four years of your life.
“I need to talk to you,” Britney/Victoria demanded on the fourth day at Skidmore. We hadn’t really seen much of each other, but a nice conversation the night before had left me thinking the ice might finally be breaking. Besides, Britney Spears music was better than the drum circles that incessantly played outside my window at Hampshire.
“Yeah?” I asked, barely looking up from the homework.
“Ohmygod! I can’t stand how like, you’re always here, doing work or whatever. I can’t, like, bring my friends by if you’re here.”
“I don’t mind if you bring your friends by,” I said absently. “You won’t bother me.”
“No, like…I already have a LOT of friends. And you don’t.”
She had my attention. “And?” I prompted.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re…you’re like, a loser! God! I really don’t think we should live together. So you have to get, like, one of those room change things. And could you leave for the day? My boyfriend is coming over.”
Two years later the incident is almost funny. It helps that Britney/Victoria got dumped by the guy she transferred here to be with and nearly failed out of school. I moved in with Steph, another transfer student, and we got along quite well.
I buried myself in books and drowned myself in coffee. I spent some time with Christina, Steph, and some of the other girls I met at orientation. We had dinner together in the dining hall almost every night and watched chick flicks on the weekends. We came to refer to ourselves as the transfer girls. The next fall, we counseled a new group of transfers through their tears. I immersed myself in my work and became obsessed with my major. Occasionally, I had a drink at the Parting Glass with a few other government students and my favorite professors. Eventually, the transfer girls went our separate ways, but Christina and I still made 1 A.M. trips to Dunkin’ Donuts.
It’s my last semester at Skidmore, and I’ve never been to Excelsior, the off-campus party house that throws a huge bash at the beginning of every year. I’ve been to the bars downtown exactly twice and I’ve never partied on State Street. More than eighty percent of campus voted for John Kerry in the last presidential election, but I am the token libertarian member of the Young Republican Club. When Christina dragged me to the first Senior Night of the year, I knew about six people in the crowded restaurant.
And I sit in my room most Friday nights, hearing the drunken revelry outside, half-wishing I could participate. But then I shrug and turn back to whatever book is in front of me. I don’t really like beer anyway.
