<p>Hey everyone thanks for reading. I've been at a local community college the last two semesters (currently on my third) while living at home, and I gotta get out of here! I've grown distant from my friends, my best friend has a thing with my ex, and I really don't want to be around this upcoming summer, as there is really nothing left for me in this town.</p>
<p>I was thinking about transferring across the country to the University of Oregon for the summer semester. Is this a bad idea? Would it be hard to meet people and make friends? I'm quite shy but at the same time I feel like this could help me. I've just been feeling increasingly miserable while at home and really I wan't to get on with my life somewhere new. </p>
<p>Thanks in advance for your replies!</p>
<p>It depends on how active UO is during the summer and how out of your way you want to go to meet people. I transferred into UMich this past summer and campus was like a ghost town. I didn’t really meet anyone and for me it wasn’t a big deal, as it allowed me to focus solely on making the academic adjustment to my new school. Once fall semester started back up however, I’ve had no problem meeting people and I’m generally pretty introverted.</p>
<p>Edit: I also don’t live in dorms. If you go into the dorms, I would think it’s near impossible to not meet people.</p>
<p>Yes, but often dorms are not open summer semester. But that is a possibility for the fall. Summer is a great time to explore the areas near campus and get outside a lot. Even if you don’t make friends that first semester outside your classes, you can still enjoy the campus and surrounding area. I will say that a lot of dorms are full of 18 year old freshman (depending on the dorm situation). If you are female and there are all women dorms, you might consider living in one of those. You will make friends, but still preserve your sanity. Or if the university you attend has co-operative housing, those are actually pretty good communal living arrangements where you will make friends (best time I had a Michigan, where FatSquirrel is, was when I lived in a co-op).</p>
<p>Can you afford OOS tuition? And… if you really want to get out someplace, apply to more than one university so you are sure to have someplace to go.</p>
<p>At the University of Oregon, the overwhelming majority of upperclassmen live in off campus apartments or houses. I’d look to subletting an apartment in a student complex over the summer so you can potentially meet students who are staying there for either work, research, classes, etc. </p>
<p>I transferred this summer from a small LAC in GA to the University of Oklahoma (also in a college town about 2.5 hours from a city of more than two million people) where the only person I knew was a guy I went to high school with. I’ll be honest, during the summer months, I seriously questioned my decision to transfer to OU. I was stuck in an apartment with an alcoholic who made incredibly racist/homophobic comments and only managed to stay sane by talking with my best friend on Skype for hours. Because there were few university events going on, and quite a few students in my classes were non traditional students, it was difficult to make friends with other people. However, when I started using sites like meetup to connect with groups of people in the OKC area, my social life and overall happiness dramatically improved. If you do transfer during the summer, I’ll suggest you do the same. Find groups of people with similar interests in the Eugene area, and even though the college will likely be totally dead, you’ll still be able to make friends and connect with people.</p>
<p>Frankly I wonder if that might be a better idea than transferring in the Fall. That summer semester will probably be pretty quiet, but by the time all the kids come back for Fall you will already know your way around and have had a chance to adjust. I was a Fall transfer at my school and the freshman-but-not-a-freshman thing was kind of obnoxious. Maybe if you start in summer, by fall you wont feel like a “freshman” anymore and be able to fit in better with kids in your class.</p>
<p>As for the dorms question, I lived in dorms and I met people but I didn’t befriend anybody from my dorm because they were all 17 year olds and I was almost 21, and we had absolutely nothing in common except being new to the school, which as it turns out was not enough to build a friendship on. I was finalizing my major and looking for internships while they were deciding whether or not they had even really wanted to come to college in the first place and getting sloppy drunk on their first taste of freedom. Dorms are not all they are cracked up to be if you’re not 18 anymore. I did live in a dorm both years at my university, but the second year I lived in an all girls dorm with more upperclassmen in it. An apartment might have been even better.</p>