By Katelyn Hawthorne
It's started. Senior year is well under way. I am searching for that perfect first job and trying to spend as much time with my friends as possible, and as I think back on my years in school, I have tried to remember the best times. There was dressing up for Halloween sophomore year, renting out a bar with my roommate for our 21st birthday party and of course spring break in the Bahamas.
But as I think back on these moments, I realize that none of them would have happened if I had not made the best decision of my college career-transferring from the University of Missouri-Columbia (Mizzou or MU to those of you from Missouri) to Miami University.
Believe me, transferring was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made, but as it turns out, it was the best decision I could have made. Of course that was not how my friends saw it when I said the word transferring. And to Ohio? What could I have been thinking?
I was thinking that I needed a change. I wanted to go some place new and different; a place where I only knew a couple of people and would have to branch out, try new things and make new friends. But despite this desire, my year at Mizzou gave me some of the best memories of my college career.
Our dorm was a close-knit one. We were always out together, whether it was a house party or the infamous barn parties that packed hundreds of people into a barn with a full bar and stage, complete with bonfire in the backyard. We were that group of first-year students that went out 20 at a time and always made up a good chunk of the party.
By far, my best times were the prank wars that went on between the guys and some of the girls. These prank wars involved well thought out plans that sometimes took months to execute. We were a dedicated group that never missed a chance to stick it to someone else.
I am still proud to say that I was one of only two girls in the dorm to retaliate against the boys. After being boxed into our rooms, a feat that took the boys months of saving up old pizza boxes and staying up to all hours of the night to put together a solid wall of pizza boxes that was duct taped to our dorm doors preventing us from getting out in the morning, my friend Lauren and I were the only girls to create a retaliation prank that is still talked about.
We spent hours stringing together as many tampons as we could. Then, just as one boy was taking a shower and the other was being distracted in his room, we did it. We hung the tampons on the door to look like beads, and we covered the entire door and the surrounding walls with pads. Our pictures were taped next to the door so they knew just who had gotten them back.
They were surprised and proud that at least some girls had the guts to get back at them. They even taped our pictures to the inside of their closets so that the legend of the prank war could live on. To my knowledge, our pictures remained and may still remain taped to the inside of that closet.
But despite all of the great memories I have from Mizzou, I am confident that staying there for four years would not have been for me. It is a good school and right for a lot of people, but I knew I wanted a change.
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Leaving Mizzou meant a lot of tears, happiness and anxiety for what lay ahead. I knew after only a month there that I needed to transfer. I had wanted to go to Miami since my junior year of high school. I knew this was the place for me. It was the only school I applied to for transferring, and I was unsure of what I would do if I did not get in.
I found out mid-first semester I would be transferring. I spent the spring semester living up college and making the most of the time I had with my friends. Our last night in the dorm we had a giant water balloon fight. The hall was filled with water and silly string. It was one last blissful night before the flood of goodbyes the next day.
I will never forget those last hours in the dorm. I had not cried that hard since moving from San Francisco to St. Louis when I was 10. I was unsure of what lay ahead, but I knew moving was something I had to do.
My first couple of weeks at Miami were nerve-racking. It was a blur of feeling like a first-year again. I had to learn about the school, the town and make friends all over again. Some friends from Mizzou asked me why I would want to go through that again. My answer was always that it would be worth it in the end.
Well it has been worth it. My experience here has far exceeded anything I could have expected. I have made life-long friends in all of the girls I met sophomore year in the dorm, many of whom were transfer students as well. I rekindled my love for journalism and was given the chance to work on a newspaper once again. I have received experiences both in and out of the classroom that I know could not have come at Mizzou.
My brother told me before leaving for college that he wanted to make the right choice the first time around and not have to go through the process of transferring. While this is good for him and many others who feel the same, I will always be grateful that I had the chance to attend two universities and that both have given me the friends I wanted and the experiences
I needed.
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