Mmm, it’s the remix.

I transferred schools, and all of a sudden I’m a freshman again, a scared little freshman who doesn’t know anything or anybody. It’s a strange experience, feeling like you’ve fallen back in time. I’ve done the RA-sponsored meet-and-greets, the 20 people trying to get one table at a restaurant thing, dining halls, dorm buildings, and club fairs. Now I’m doing it all again but in a ~New York City~ font. Yet, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, there have been a lot of great things about my first month on campus. However, I think as a transfer student, i.e. someone who has done all this before in a different font, I have a unique perspective on the things that are great about being a student at Barnard and the things that are not so great. Hence, I have compiled a list of my favorite and least favorite things about being a transfer student here and placed them in a definitive, not at all biased list.

S-Tier: You don’t have to pay for laundry

Don’t ever, EVER, take this for granted. At my old school, it cost me two whole dollars every time I had to do a load of laundry. Imagine all the things I could have bought: a taco at Taco Bell, a half dozen eggs, two items from the dollar store. Instead, I wasted that money on laundry. This shit is mad luxurious—it almost makes up for the cost of tuition. 

A-Tier: The lovely people

Sorry I put free laundry above the high-quality people that go to this school. I can’t get over the laundry thing, though. Anyway, genuinely everybody here is so welcoming and friendly. I think if I had transferred to a school where people weren’t so darn nice all the time, I would be having a much tougher time right now. Also, the power of the LGBTQ community here is so strong and I love it. 

C-Tier: No lounges

At my last school, I was a real lounge troll. I spent a lot of time, yes, lounging around there. It was a great place to meet people on the floor or just hang out and do homework when the four walls of my dorm were giving me a Yellow Wallpaper moment. This would be lower, but I understand that it’s a pandemic and we can’t get everything we want. 

D-Tier: The dining halls

D is for dining halls. Skirting past the fact that they pranked me and gave me convenience points only this semester, you are right every time you go to a dining hall and think that the line is unreasonably long. No, it’s not like this everywhere else. My experience is that the dining halls get busy, but I have never in my life had to wait in a line for 45 minutes to get into a dining hall before I came here. 

Negative Z Tier: Fucking Enrollment 

Okay, so the deal with being a transfer student is that we get the very last enrollment slot, so the first time I tried to register for classes I was waitlisted for every single one of them. It took two weeks, sending several emails kissing ass like it was my literal job, and one extremely teary Zoom call with my advisor to finally get a full schedule. Terrible, awful, no good, and very bad. 

Free Laundry Rooms via Bwarchives.