When I visited North Central in the summer before my junior year of college, the campus reminded me of those safety towns that my parents took me to as a kid. Safety towns were these shrunken cities with idyllic, miniature buildings and crosswalks that led you from one unspecified avenue to another. They were quietly reassuring and vaguely familiar.
North Central kind of felt that way and already somewhat like home. But if North Central felt as cozy as a home on my neighborhood’s block, Welcome Week was kind of like the birthday party next door that someone’s mom made them invite me to.
But the party itself was actually pretty fun and well-organized and thoughtfully planned. There was a comedian, a magician and ice cream. New friends buzzed across freshly manicured lawns while pop music played in the background.
Only in this hypothetical party metaphor, I showed up by myself. And I sort of orbited around the other attendees, trying desperately to blend in and discover my own circle. I thought, “Maybe this is just me; maybe I’m not doing any of this right. Maybe I’m not properly taking advantage of what is being offered to me.” But the more I chatted with other transfer students, the more I realized that we were all in the same boat; we were just sailing in different directions.
By the time I moved in, transfer orientation, which happened in May, was well behind me. By then, transfers were all scattered around campus like puzzle pieces yearning to be connected. Our upperclassmen roommates and suitemates chose to move in later that weekend, leaving many of us to brave the events of Welcome Week on our own.
“It was both appreciated and noted that they gave us the option to participate in Welcome Week and that they gave us the option to move in early,” said Ally Rott, ’21, a transfer student from Waubonsee Community College who began classes this fall term. “But the actual outcome wasn’t really what, I think, they hoped for us.”
Rott knew that North Central genuinely wanted her to enjoy the week of events they had planned for all new students and the ones specifically designed for students like her — from the transfer student meeting that took place on Thursday morning to the Cardinal group session that gathered the first night on campus. Still, Rott believed there was room for improvement.
“It was all freshmen, and then, what felt like, seven or eight transfer students,” Rott said. “And we were all trying to do these events together. It was just a bit uncomfortable.”
What Rott wished she had known or realized before deciding to move in early was that many of the people that she could expect to graduate with weren’t going to be on campus until right before her courses began.
“You don’t want to walk around alone and be kinda known as the weirdo who’s always just wandering the halls and, like, singing to themselves,” said Rott.
The orientation staff emphatically encourages all incoming students, transfer and otherwise, to participate in the events during Welcome Week. The purpose is to meet people even before classes begin and discover all of the resources available to students on campus.
Director of Student Involvement and Transition Programs Rachel Pridgen understands that transfer students enter into the North Central community with a very different perspective than first-year students, for whom there is no collegiate frame of reference.
“There’s something different about transfer students and what they expect and hope to get out of the experience,” said Pridgen. “Because they know how to do college. They understand how college works. They might not know how North Central works.”
“There is a phenomenon that they talk about in higher-ed called transfer shock,” said Pridgen. “It’s about one month in, and it’s when students who feel like they know college come in and they start going through the motions, and they start thinking, ‘I have a lot more questions than I realized.’”
When considering the Welcome Week events as a whole, Pridgen strives to foster an environment that makes transfer students feel included, seen and heard as soon as they set foot on campus.
“Transfer students have more of an individualized approach to college,” Pridgen said. “They have specific classes that they need to take, they have a different history – maybe they took one year of community college, maybe they took two or maybe they took three years at multiple schools. But I think what is very similar to any incoming student is: ‘What environment am I coming into?'”
For students like Rott, this idea was all too familiar, even though everything else on campus wasn’t. What counted as a meal swipe at places like Au Bon Pain? When did they accept meal swipes? What are bonus bucks? How do they work? However, the brief events that were organized for transfer students during the week were somewhat disappointing to Rott. The sessions contained only snippets of information already covered during the transfer orientation, not pertinent advice about how to navigate her campus efficiently.
“They had sessions that were specifically for transfer students,” Rott said. “They were informational sessions, but we really didn’t learn anything new in them.”
Rott just wanted a place to meet and socialize with people that could relate to what she was experiencing as the “new kid” all over again. However, she was a “new kid” that wasn’t starting at the very beginning like many of those around her. The transfer-specific sessions had a clear purpose, but the structured format didn’t lend itself to meaningful interaction among incoming students.
“You didn’t really get to know people in those sessions,” Rott said. “If they were going to have sessions for transfer students to get to meet each other, then advertise them as that, because we wanted to meet people; we wanted to make friends.”
Victoria Rudy, ’21, who transferred from College of DuPage this fall, echoes Rott’s sentiment.
“I met all of my (transfer) friends randomly, and everyone felt kind of the same way,” Rudy said. “Either, one, they didn’t have their roommate with them, so they felt like it would be weird to just go by themselves, or they didn’t know anybody, so they just stayed in their room.”
Faculty members and orientation staff were warm and generous with their time, and first-year students seemed to find comfort in those that had moved in alongside them. So, why did so many transfer students still feel like they were on an island by themselves?
“I didn’t feel like there were a lot of transfer-specific events,” said Julie Gotsch, ’20, who transferred to North Central from College of DuPage last fall. “There was more of that before transferring because you’re with transfer students for transfer orientations.”
This was an issue meant to be remedied by the introduction of transfer seminar courses this year, a required class for all transfer students to take before graduating. McKenna Reed, a transfer admissions counselor at North Central and a former transfer student herself, sees this as an incredibly positive shift in the right direction.
“I personally would have loved to have a transfer seminar,” Reed said. “I think it’s a direct gateway to meeting a lot of transfers. So, I think that goal was to bring transfers together, to immediately make you feel like you’re surrounded by other people that are also new to the campus but also not new to college.”
Striking this balance can be difficult for many students, including Rott and Rudy. On one hand, they felt like seasoned college pros with two full years of courses behind them. On the other hand, they were struggling to swim in a sea of new students whose experience still felt vastly different from their own.
However, Reed hopes that, over time, transfer students begin to identify not just exclusively with those that have also transferred from other schools but also with other North Central students that share equally important commonalities.
“In general, there’s the hope that you get integrated into campus and you’re not wearing that label of ‘I’m a new transfer student!’” Reed said. “Not that that’s, by any means, a bad thing, but we want you to feel like you’re equally as part of this campus as someone who has been here a year or two years — whatever.”
The party would soon end and everyone would start to learn the rhythm of their new schedule. Roommates moved in, helpful dining hall signs were posted and classes introduced an entirely new world. Rott remains thankful for her experience during Welcome Week; she believes it taught her a lot about herself and the community she now feels a member of.
“It’s been fun so far,” Rott said. “It’s all been worth it.”
