Thursday. January 31, 1 900
Weekender
Page 5
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mentation activities,
sting to unfamiliarity
t-new kids on campus
arrived from their other schools yet."
Partial registration is done through the mail during
the summer before the transfer student enters UNC,
said Ben Perry, assistant director of records and
registration.
"Junior transfers are normally contacted during
the summer and given the opportunity to look at the
courses and choose what they want to take' Perry
said. "After we get their requests, we pull whatever
cards are available and send the packets to (the
College of) Arts and Sciences.
"When they (junior transfers) come back in
August, they are partially preregistered," Perry said.
"The only people they get to register ahead of are
returning admitted students who are not
preregistered, but at least they get a whack at what is
open during the summer."
Despite their low priority in registration, many
junior transfers get the courses they want. "I got
everything l signed up for during my first semester
here," said senior Debbie Ford a transfer from
Wheaton, a four-year university in Chicago.
"I thought they should have spent a little more
; time at the first of the year with orientation
explaining the whole academic area as far as drop-
i add and courses are concerned. I felt I had to learn a
lot of those things on my own," Ford said.
r v
Orientation activities are planned for junior
transfers, Hartmann said, but many transfer
students either are unaware of or do not wish to
take part in these activities.
f "We (orientation officials) have to do a lot of work
t in making them (transfers) see how important it is to
avail themselves of the activities we offer in the
l summer and at the beginning of the semester," she
) said. "A majority live off campus because of the
1 scarcity of dorm space, and, although we have junior
2 transfer orientation counselors, it's harder to
a program things like we do for freshmen because
s transfers are harder to bring together in one place."
f About 50 volunteers participate in junior transfer
orientation counseling, Hartmann said, including a
3 coordinator and 10-12 area coordinators, each of
whom supervises three to five orientation
d counselors.
"One question junior transfers have more than
anything else is about their academic progress,"
Hartmann said. "In the summer, we don't have all of
their records. In the fall, so many converge on (the
College of) Arts and Sciences that they can't get all
the attention and information they may want or
need.
junior transfers tend to be a little more distant
from the entire orientation process than the
freshman who will avail himself of every possible
activity, Hartmann said.
"I think it's fair to say that students who apply here
as freshmen are better served by the University it
(UNC) is geared to accepting people as freshmen
and as graduate students," Hartmann said.
"Although we're sensitive to their (junior transfers')
needs, the whole University is not geared to them as
it is to entering freshmen.
"Although we do make a big effort to reach junior
transfers and to help them in orientation, I think we
can do more," she said.
Hartmann said a junior transfer student
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Roslyn Hartmann, assistant director of student affairs, tries to include junior transfers in orientation
convocation at the beginning of each academic year
was attended by most transfers.
"We give them a schedule of activities and say
'please participate.' We try to tell them about the
registration process; we try to give them a sense of
the campus and introduce them to someone who
can be helpful to them as a counselor," she said.
'Although we do make a big effort
to reach junior transfers and to help
them in orientation, I think we can
cfo more
Roslyn Hartmann
For the transfer student, adjustment to a strange
and usually much larger school than the one
from which they transferred may be the hardest
part of changing schools.
"In a lot of ways it was very frustrating at first.
There were a lot of times when I just wanted to go
back to Wheaton, and I really missed all of my friends
there," Ford said. "But I'm really glad I came (to
Carolina). When I first decided to transfer, I just was
going to pick up a few business courses that I
needed, then go back and finish up.
"But I got really involved in the speech
department and with Inter-Varsity (Christian
Fellowship), and now there's no way I would go
back."
Ford said a letter she received during the summer
from an orientation counselor at Carolina helped
establish personal contact with the University. "At
first it was a little awkward for me, but I found and
maintained friendships through Inter-Varsity. They
have a real good program for junior transfer
orientation," she said.
Lees McRae transfer Simmons said she found the
academic aspect of Carolina much more demanding
but at the same time more rewarding than at McRae.
"The courses I've had have been excellent, and
the things I'm learning will stick with me, so I don't
regret it at all," she said. "But the grading is stricter,
the testing is harder, and there's much, much more
work. I had to go through a period of adjustment and
of working things out for myself.
Simmons had seen the campus and her roorn
before enrolling at Carolina, but she felt the
orientation process did not help much in her
personal adjustment to the University.
"It (orientation) wasn't thorough, but that was
partly my fault because I didn't participate in things.
Overall, I knew pretty much what I was getting into,
and the orientation counselors were very, very good.
They were just there all the time," she said.
"At first I was a semi-hermit I just stayed in my
room all the time because I didn't know anybody,
and I felt kind of out of things because all the girls in
the dorm had known each other for a long time,"
Simmons said. Life at Carolina now is much better,
because she works at WXYC and is getting to know
more people, Simmons said.
"Essentially, I've found what I want to do at
Carolina transferring tests your ability to meet new
people," Simmons said. "I'm very, very glad I
transferred. Carolina has so many different things
you won't find at a small school because the budget
won't allow it. I'm glad I walked across a campus
where I knew everybody's name and everybody's
business. It was fun for two years, but it gets boring. I
wanted both sides of the coin; I wanted the small
school atmosphere, and I wanted the advantages of a
large university."
Ford said that although she was glad she
transferred from Wheaton to Carolina, she was glad
she had gone to a small school (Wheaton has a
student population of about 2,000) before entering a
large university.
"I'm really glad I was exposed to more than one
type of atmosphere, and I felt a lot more confident in
scnool when I got here than when I was a freshman.
"I guess the big disadvantage in transferring was in
not having enough time to get to know all the
ropes," she said. "But the hardest thing was the lost
contact and the friends I had to leave behind."
Meane Sill is assistant editor of Weekender.