Between a rock and a hard place

grimwig
Thu, 04 Apr 2013 23:35:10 +0000

Hi all. I’m in a tough spot right now, and I feel lost. Any help would be hugely appreciated.

Here’s the situation: I am in the second semester of my freshman year. I attend a mediocre state university (which is also a commuter school), and I hate it. I didn’t want to go to this school in the first place, but my parents told me that I had no other options (due to financial trouble).

I’m unhappy here for several reasons.



1.) I don’t have any friends.

I had a very healthy, normal social life in high school. I never had any trouble building relationships, meeting new people, introducing myself, etc.

In college, however, I haven’t made a single friend yet. There are several organizations which I wanted to join, but one of them is defunct, and the others rarely (almost never) meet.

To be brief, my social life is pathetic.

2.) I live at home, with my parents, and I commute to school everyday. This is probably related to #1.

I have a good relationship with my parents, but, to be honest, I feel like a loser. I’m not getting the full college experience. But since I live only 10-15 mins. away from school, there’s very little reason for me to live on-campus, especially with the room & board costs. Moving to the dorms or an on-campus apartment aren’t serious options.

3.) The academics are second-rate.

4.) The atmosphere is dull.

Students aren’t interested in learning or meeting new people. Only 8% of students live on-campus; the rest commute and are there only for a degree.

- The campus often seems like a ghost town. Not much happens.

As I see it, there is a solution to each of the problems mentioned above.

The solution is to transfer to another school. I already know which school, and it is almost a certainty that I will be admitted. It solves all four of the problems I listed, and it has some added benefits.

You may be wondering, then, what this thread is for.

The problem with transferring is that my family is having financial problems, and this new school is considerably more expensive than my current one. (However, you should know that the school to which I want to transfer has a much higher return on investment than my current school, if that counts for anything.)

I’ve already talked with my parents about this at length. They are willing to send me to the new school, because they understand that I’m unhappy. Still, I’m reluctant to transfer because I’m not sure that my happiness is worth the already large burden borne by my parents which I will only exacerbate.

Despite this, my parents have told me that they can handle it, and that they couldn’t live with themselves knowing that I was so depressed at school. In other words, they will pay the extra money for me to go to the other school and thus be far happier (which is extremely likely, by the way, for many reasons which I won’t go into now, but will instead have you assume are valid and convincing).

One part of me thinks that there is no reason to stay at this school if I’m miserable. Why not transfer, given all the advantages?

Another part of me thinks that the other part is selfish, and that I should stay depressed and unhappy in order to save my parents some money.

So, should I transfer and be satisfied with a better education and a better social life, at the cost of greater student loan debt?

Or, should I stay at my current school to minimize student loan debt, at the cost of the next three years being nearly unbearable (yes, it is that bad)?

Thank you so much for reading this. I really need help, and I would love some feedback.