We walk among you and sit next to you in classes. Most times you don’t even know we’re here. You might have seen us around and smiled at us in the hallways. We’re often the ones who look dazed and confused, trying to make sense of the bustling metropolis that is Saint Louis University.
We may look sane, but we’re all going a little crazy on the inside. We’ve been ejected from our comfort zones, thrown into the deep end and told to swim. We put on a brave face but we’re really all a little scared.
No, we’re not the freshman class of 2012. We are the transfer students from SLU’s Madrid campus. Often forgotten or overlooked here at what we call the “home campus,” we are the “not quites.” We’re not quite transfer students but we’re not quite new students either.
Every year a handful of students from SLU Madrid leave their enclave in the heart of Spain and make the pilgrimage to St. Louis. We do so for a number of reasons, but mostly because our programs of study usually require us to spend at least a semester here in order to complete our majors.
This is our semester abroad.
However, we don’t get the same prep most study abroad students do. Except for one day a semester when a home campus representative treks to Spain to explain the transfer process, we know little about what life is like in SLU or St. Louis in general.
When we arrive, no one teaches us how to adjust from a school of 650 students to one of more than 11,000.
Personal problems aside, administratively, we sometimes we fall through the cracks. We don’t get a SLU 101 orientation like the freshmen. If you’re an international student, there’s an orientation for you (but that’s because we need to register with the government, so they know where we are at all times) but American students don’t get anything. Those “not quites” have to fend for themselves.
It happens that people just don’t know what to do with us. One student couldn’t quite figure out how SLU had categorized her. One minute she was a new student, the other, a transfer. At one point there was even no record of her in the system.
Another student, this time from the nursing program, missed out on important information because e-mails were sent out to new students and transfers, and technically not being part of either group, her name was on neither list. It was only when she arrived that she found out about numerous extra costs for things like background tests and fingerprinting, vaccinations and drug testing.
Yet, all in all, Madrileños are explorers, and we do cherish the opportunity to visit our fellow SLU students in St. Louis, the same way so many of them visit us every semester in Madrid.
So if you see a SLU Madrid student wandering, bewildered, around campus, come up and say hi. Chances are you’ll get a great story, or a great friend out of it.
Kejan Haynes is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.
