Starting over as a transfer student at SU made me who I am today
Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.
My parents’ car had just disappeared down the street, yet I was already lost. The wind was blowing snow sideways, and I hadn’t even zipped up my new winter coat all the way. My jeans were soaked at the bottom, and my Ugg boots, which I thought were made for cold weather, were completely ruined.
I couldn’t feel my hands, which meant no checking my phone for directions to the student center that I was certain I’d walked past twice. The walkways and quad were nearly empty. It was just me, apparently, who was dumb enough to go out in this weather.
Somewhere under the four layers that I was wearing all wrong, one thought kept coming back to me: I’ve made a huge mistake.
After wandering for far too long in the snow, I found my orientation group. I wasn’t excited to be there. I’d already been to college orientation. I felt no need to sit through one again.
I remember people warning me that transferring to Syracuse University as a second-semester sophomore during the brutal winter would make it difficult to make friends. At orientation, I realized this was far from the truth.
My group members and I bonded over having to walk in the horrible storm. We chatted about the different parts of the world we were from. Our orientation leader let us give our hot takes, and we ended up sitting in that classroom together for almost two hours.
Afterwards, we traded phone numbers. It felt amazing to know a group of people who were going through the same thing I was. I started to see how the cold bonded SU students together.
That first week of class, I was tussling with an IKEA shelf that I’d ordered, spending my afternoon trying to assemble it. A girl that I hadn’t met from down the hall approached me and asked if I was new. Before I’d even realized what was happening, she invited me to a game night she was hosting that weekend.
I’d been dreading the first weekend since I knew no one on my floor, and suddenly that weight was lifted. My shelf, which stood sideways in my room for the entire year, was suddenly unimportant. I had a group of people who I actually knew on campus. I felt like I could start to fit in and find my place.
Finding that group of people changed something. I went from surviving SU to experiencing it socially. Thanks to this, I started paying attention to new opportunities and saying yes to things out of my comfort zone.
Starting over didn’t just introduce me to some of the things that define me, it’s what made them possible in the first place.Peyton Tapp, Personal Essayist
A professor of mine suggested a research job, work that I previously wouldn’t have been encouraged to take, and now care deeply for.
After receiving an email about applying for student government, I applied on a whim, and now serve as a Board of Elections commissioner with an inspiring group of people around me.
It felt strange being trusted with important work this early, but I knew that I’d gotten these positions for a reason. Starting over didn’t just introduce me to some of the things that define me, it’s what made them possible in the first place.
If I could tell my snow-soaked, lost-on-the-quad self anything, it would be to ask for help. I quickly learned that people here want to help you if you let them. My first week, I was too stubborn and embarrassed to ask where my classes were, and it cost me excessive time in negative temperatures.
I’d also tell her that you’re not behind, even if it feels like you may be. I started over at SU in the middle of my sophomore year. Everyone had friends from their freshman dorms, knew certain professors and had made a life in Syracuse over the past year and a half. They all had a rhythm that I hadn’t found yet. But it didn’t matter.
Some of the best things that’ve happened to me only occurred because I was willing to take the leap. However you’re arriving here, as a freshman or a transfer student, you have time to figure it out.
The last week of April, it snowed again in Syracuse. This time, I didn’t think twice about it. I zipped up my coat, pulled on real snow boots and walked to class not wondering if I would make it on time or if I was lost, because I wasn’t — I was home.
I knew the paths, I greeted friends on the way and even made plans to go to my favorite local restaurant, Colluci, that night. If you’d told that freezing cold girl on the quad that this campus and these people would turn into things she couldn’t imagine her life without, she wouldn’t have believed you. But here I am.
I understood what I’d done. I found exactly where I was supposed to be.
Peyton Tapp is a junior majoring in philosophy and political science. She can be reached at petapp@syr.edu.
