MARISSA BURR
Opinion Editor
Trigger Warning: assault, loneliness
May has been a terrible month for me since 2020.
That first year brought a slew of canceled senior activities that I’d never get back. In 2021, my roommate assaulted me. My family was rocked in 2022 by a motorcycle accident. And in 2023, I was forced to leave behind the greatest group of people I’d ever met.
So yeah, the month of May and I aren’t on the best terms.
I’ve missed my friends at The Canisius Griffin every day since I left.
The memories I made with them in the two short semesters I worked for the opinion section of the newspaper were some of the happiest moments of my life, and I still look back on them during my darkest days.
With them, I had the freedom to be myself without fear of being judged and every time I walked into the office I wanted to stay for hours. Thursday night editing sessions meant comradery and laughs and feeling completely at home in my own skin.
Those meetings still happen, and my friends still edit together, but I’m not there. I’m here.
To be honest—in a way I didn’t even achieve in an article detailing my assault—I feel alone here, and it makes me feel guilty.
I have my family, whom I love and relish in the fact that I can spend more time with them.
Barging in on my parents for rant sessions and pantry raids is one of those college experiences I’d never gotten when I went to school away in Buffalo.
Seeing my grandparents weekly makes my heart warm and smile exponentially larger. The fact that I get to run into my cousins at the grocery store is something I didn’t know I needed.
I have my roommates, but the three of us are all at different points in our lives and don’t get to spend nearly enough time together. We have a mostly online relationship that we’d have if I was back in Buffalo.
I’m lucky enough to have my partner, whom I love and can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with. We have an apartment and a dog and an entertainment room. What more could I possibly want?
I want my Griffin friends. Or to be more exact, I want to be there with them. I want to be back in a place where I never doubt that I belong.
Being a transfer student has come with its ups and downs, but the downs are more prevalent, which makes me homesick for my old life even more.
I don’t feel connected to the campus, or most of the people here.
It seems like this isn’t a milestone in my life, it’s a stepping stone.
In a year and a half I’ll get my diploma; if I had my way I’d probably just have it sent to me in the mail but my mom would kill me if I didn’t walk the stage.
Yes, I like my classes and professors, and the opportunities I’ve been given here, but I ache for something more.
I recognize that one of my problems could be the fact that I keep comparing Fredonia to Canisius. I’ve tried not to, but I just can’t help it. That was the college I chose, the one I fell in love with.
Despite the horrible things that happened to me while I was there, I never stopped loving the school, and especially not my friends on the paper. The campus was beautiful, there was always something to do and I felt connected there.
Here, even in my second semester I still feel like an outsider, and I know that I’m not the first transfer student to feel like this.
I was lucky enough to interview four transfer students like myself. Their names are kept anonymous for emotional confidentiality. Opening up about these struggles isn’t easy.
Senior transfer student from Villa Maria College to SUNY Fredonia remembers, “I genuinely felt like I did not belong to this new college.”
Even though I was moving back to a place that was comfortable, I wasn’t the same person I was when I’d left three years ago.
In fact, I had hated this town and swore I’d never live here again. I’m not where I’d planned to be, and that’s still terrifying.
“My experience [as a transfer student], in summary, is being very afraid. I think sometimes it’s easy to have all these expectations for how life will look after completely uprooting yourself from what you’ve previously known,” said a junior transfer student from Wilkes University to Canisius University.
Everyone says, “don’t worry, stick it out and eventually you’ll find your place.” In an attempt to be candid, I doubt it, but I’m not going to stop trying.
I only have two and a half semesters left here, so Fredonia, if you’re holding out on me, please stop it. I want to enjoy this place for all it can be, and I want to fall in love with it like I did Canisius. I don’t want to wait.
Another transfer student recalled their experience.
“It took until my last semester on campus until I felt like I belonged there and had chiseled a spot for myself, even though there were only 50 or so people in my department that I saw all the time,” said an alumni transfer student from SUNY Fredonia to Buffalo State.
The idea that I’m not going through this alone is supposed to feel comforting, and in some ways it is.
My loved ones who have transferred have assured me that these things are normal, especially because it wasn’t really my choice to leave, it was money and trauma.
In a way, another choice was taken away from me and I feel as though I’ve been thrown into shark-infested waters with an open wound.
I’m being eaten alive.
Maybe it feels like there’s no one else in the waters with me, and that I’m doing everything wrong.
A senior transfer student from Canisius University to SUNY Fredonia said, “At first, I did find it a little difficult to fit in. That’s bound to happen whenever you enter a new environment for the first time. I was lucky enough to already have multiple friends that were living in/going to school in Fredonia already. Those connections helped me to find my place in the community and build more relationships until I was eventually able to settle in.”
So maybe this is an open letter to The Griffin, letting them know how much of an effect they had on me. Or maybe it’s a plea to my current school to accept me some more. I don’t know, but I know that it’s nice to be honest with myself. I spent the Fall semester missing my old life and longing for a better new one, and I’m not satisfied.
But for those of you who know me, when am I ever satisfied?
So I’m going to keep going, keep pushing forward and hold onto the good memories I’ve made throughout college, no matter where they are.
May 2024 is ready for me, so I need to be ready for it.
Who knows, maybe those inspirational posters are right and the best is yet to come?