Yet Another Ignored Minority

Transfer students: chances are you have at least one of them in each of your classes. We are a small, but important force on the UC Berkeley campus. We come in as juniors from all over the country and the world, we are often older than the average undergraduate, and we breathe diversity into the student body-not in terms of color, but in terms of life experiences.

Case in point: I left L.A. shortly after graduating high school to live an independent life in the Bay Area. I left behind my impending move to Oregon to attend the University of Portland and began working as a receptionist at a dot-com company in San Jose.

In my first year after high school, I coded HTML for companies like Yahoo and Rational Software. After seeing UC Berkeley for the first time in 2001, I decided I wanted to attend and spent three years taking classes at Vista College preparing to transfer. I graduated from Vista last May with an AA degree in Liberal Arts-less than a month after learning I had been accepted to UC Berkeley.

I am a nontraditional student. I am 22 years old and have been financially independent for nearly five years. I have worked many jobs, and now support myself through the gift my father left me when he passed away in 2003. I live in San Francisco with my fiance, and-like many other transfers-sometimes feel disconnected from life on campus.

Transfer students are a valuable asset to UC Berkeley, and yet many seem disillusioned with their experience here.

"I do not feel like I am learning anything," one transfer student told me. "Thank goodness for the RSF and the ASUC art studio."

Another student, a transfer from Sacramento who left all of her friends behind to come to UC Berkeley, said that she is so disappointed in her Berkeley experience that she will be studying abroad next year in Scotland.

"I think the reason transfer students have such a hard time here," she said, "is because we have a prior college experience to compare it to."

She has a point. At community colleges, we found ourselves in classes with other nontraditional students of all ages with varied backgrounds. Our professors, many holding doctoral degrees, taught at community colleges because they wanted to teach-in other words, they were not at Vista or Sacramento City College just to do research, but to inspire a new generation of students. There were no graduate student instructors, and all of our professors knew our names.

At UC Berkeley, we are taught by brilliant professors who are not necessarily passionate about teaching. We regularly hear political agendas pushed in the classroom, are often given one ideological side of an issue and are taught little more than the focus of our professors' research. Our professors do not know our names; we are tracked by an eight-digit number and have trouble getting into the classes we need.

Transfer students are told upon their application, admission and orientation at UC Berkeley that academic life on this campus will be very different than academic life at a community college. Most of us believe we will succeed, that we will not stumble, that community college prepared us well for life at UC Berkeley. The truth is that we are not always right about that. So, here are some tips for transfer students that I have accrued over the past year:

One: When your advisers tell you to take 13 units your first semester, and not to get involved in too many activities, listen to them. My first semester, I took 14 units on top of editing news at the Daily Cal-be ye not so foolish! I still do not know how I got through last semester with a reasonable GPA.

Two: Get to know your classmates. Many have been here longer than you have, and some will also be transfer students. They are valuable assets who can offer you sage advice on how to get the most out of your years at Berkeley.

Three: The Center for Transfer, Re-Entry, and Student Parents offers a myriad of support systems to help you in the transition to life at Berkeley: Education 198, "Strategies for Student Success at Cal" is offered in the fall and spring, and helps new transfer students learn to manage their time, get involved with the campus community and improve academic skills.

Four: Relax. You don't need a 4.0 to get into grad school. The competitive atmosphere at Berkeley may lead you to believe that all of your peers have perfect averages and engage in several resume-building activities a semester, but that is exactly what they want you to believe. Try to have fun at Berkeley, and don't take anything too seriously.

Five: Finally, I would like to suggest getting acquainted with the RSF and the ASUC art studio. Spending half an hour on the treadmill with my Nalgene and iPod to keep me company is the best stress relief I have found here.

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