When I first graduated high school in 2011, I enrolled at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. FIU seemed to have everything I thought I wanted in a university. It was a good university academically, it was in a great location with plenty to do outside of campus and there seemed to be an endless amount of people to meet and interact with for the next four years. But soon after starting my first semester at FIU, it became very apparent to me that this was not the place that I was looking to call home for the next four years.

A lot of people decide to go to junior college when they graduate high school for a number of reasons whether they are financial, academic, athletics, or maybe something else entirely. When most people decide to attend a four year university, they have hopes, or at the very least, intentions of staying at the school for the duration of their college years. But sometimes no matter how hard you try to make it work, things don’t always go as planned and the decision has to be made to transfer to a different university.

Junior John Cardona, who is also a member of the football team, transferred to California Lutheran University after attending the University of Arizona out of high school before making the decision to leave the Tucson based school.

“When I left Arizona I was looking for a better opportunity for myself athletically and also for a school that would allow me to receive a great education,” Cardona said. “CLU is both of things, in my opinion, which is why I decided to come here.”

Academics can weigh heavily into the decision process when students are leaving a university. For some students, the school they currently attend doesn’t have the major they are looking to pursue or even if it is offered maybe the program isn’t the strongest.

For sophomore transfer Matt Paparella this was the case for him when he decided to transfer here from Williamette University.

“I’m majoring in business and music production so I felt that Cal Lutheran would be a better fit for me as far as what I’m studying and what I want to do down the road than the school I was at before,” Paparella said.

For some people who are transferring and looking for a new four year institution to attend it isn’t so much about classes or a sport. Some people are actually just looking for a place that they can call home. I know that was the case for me when I decided to leave Florida International.

I was raised in South Florida so you would think that being 18-years-old and living in Miami would be a dream come true. It didn’t take me long to figure out that FIU was not the place for me to be. Not to put down FIU in any way, but I just felt that for me to grow as a person the way I wanted to, I had to branch out and find a place that would help me do that.

Funny thing is I never would have thought that I would find that place on the complete other side of the country in Thousand Oaks, California of all places.

Just as there is no such thing as a perfect person, there is no such thing as a perfect university. It just takes some people a bit longer to find the right place for them.

Alix Moise

Published November 5, 2014