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So, you spend seven years in primary school and six years in high school studying. You get through Year 12. You put in your university preferences, and get accepted into a uni. Awesome – everything’s coming up Milhouse!
You get to uni (and start using Uni Notes!), go through O-Week, enrol in your units, and then… you don’t really enjoy it that much.
This can be a confusing and, ultimately, disheartening experience, and it’s actually not all that uncommon. The thing with uni is that you never really know how much you’re going to enjoy a degree until you start it, even if it sounds like the best thing in the world! After all, you don’t really know what actually sitting in the lecture theatre will be like, or what actually completing the assignments will be like. It’s a different ball game.
And so it might get to the point where you start to wonder about the decisions you’ve made. Have you entered the right degree for you? Should you transfer? Here are some things to consider.
1. Time to reflect – what’s actually the issue?
If you find yourself struggling a bit through the beginning of your uni life, it can be difficult to step back and identify what the issue actually is. Is it the new-found independence? Is it the content itself? Is it not being familiar with your new classmates and peers?
If your displeasure is coming from something other than the degree itself, then, logically, you might like to address those issues prior to transferring or dropping out.
Case in point: I really didn’t enjoy uni at all in my first semester. I was really, really close to dropping out altogether. But on reflection, this wasn’t due to the degree I was studying. In fact, it was due to a whole range of factors – none of them particularly course-specific. In the end, I grew to love uni and, in particular, what I studied. I’m so, so glad that I didn’t transfer because I was having a tough time initially, which is something I very heavily considered. I don’t think it would have made any positive difference at all!
But that’s just one experience. If you feel very confident that you do want to transfer degrees, you have some options.
2. I definitely want to transfer.
Sweet!
The first thing to do is to talk to your university, and preferably a course adviser. These services sometimes get bad wraps, but at the end of the day, they can be extremely useful, and it makes sense to utilise whatever’s on offer. Course advisers can help you through your options and the requirements each of those options involves. For example, want to transfer into Law? You might need a certain average mark, or to have done certain units. If you try to wing it with no assistance from the university itself, you run the risk of missing a criterion or requirement, and that’s not something you want to do at all.
It’s important to recognise that transferring just simply isn’t always an option – particularly to some degrees. Different unis consider transfer applications in different ways, but it’s worth sussing out what’s actually available to you as early as possible.
The application process itself is usually pretty painless, but it will be even more so if you’re confident in your decision and have done adequate research.
3. A bit of perspective.
Transferring degrees is not a mammoth deal. Very, very many students do it every single semester across Australia. I know multiple people who have done so – some on multiple occasions.
Most of us are 17 or 18 years old when we choose our degrees. A standard 3-4 year degree takes us to 20-22 years of age, and many degrees are longer than that. Are our interests and passions when we’re 17/18 likely to be exactly the same as when we’re 20/21/22? Probably not, because you experience a lot in those few years – it’s an important time of your life. In the same way, your interests right now are very unlikely exactly the same as they were a few years ago.
It makes sense that we might simply change our mind based on the evidence we have in front of us at the time. Starting a degree in, say, Commerce, does not lock you into that degree without opportunity to explore other options. And if you transfer savvily, you might even be able to finish your new degree on time, so no harm done!
Transferring can be a bit of a pain, but it can also lead to great things if you happen to be transferring into a degree much better suited for you.
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