The Transfer

The first day of school can be stressful for any student. Most kids feel a bit anxious walking into a gymnasium crowded with people they haven’t seen all summer. But walking into the gym on that first day of school can be a lot more stressful if you are a transfer student.

According to Education Week, more than 6.5 million students transfer schools each year and have to endure the hardship of being the “new kid” navigating new teachers, new hallways, and new friends.

“It was definitely nerve-racking,” Cam Seymour said, “I had really no idea who anyone was, besides a select few people I had met through baseball…I had really no idea what to do, I just looked for the one or two people I did know and just stuck with them that first day.”

Seymour transferred to Thornton Academy at beginning of his Junior year after moving to Saco from Scarborough.

Seymour says the hardest part of transferring to a new school was finding new friends and good people he could talk to. After a few challenging weeks, Seymour knew that the move was the right choice for him.

Senior Tiffany Garland can relate. “I was overwhelmed, at my old school there was only like 300-400 kids, and at this one there’s a lot more and a lot more diverse groups,”  said Garland, who transferred this year from Sacopee Valley High School.

Garland says she was a popular student at Sacopee Valley and was involved in a lot of teams and clubs. She says the transition to TA has been tough, but she’s managed to make good friends and find her way on campus.

“My hardest moment was definitely getting put into a lot of harder classes, because my other school didn’t offer any of those kinds of classes, so it was very difficult.  And I also didn’t really have any friends to start out with, but like two or three weeks ago that I started making new friends and started talking to people and that’s when I thought things were going to turn around,” Garland said.

“I think transferring from any high school to any other high school is very challenging,” Mark Defrancesco said.  Defrancesco is a guidance counselor at Thornton Academy who has been in the department since 1996.

“At the age that you’re transferring, to leave your friends and have to make new friends, l just think that is a hard experience. We try to do our best here to make it as good as possible but I don’t think it’s easy, no matter what,” he said.

Defrancesco says that the guidance office sees between 60-80 transfer day students each year. This number does not include the many residential students who transfer each year as well. Defrancesco also adds that the way students adapt to their new environment is different for everybody.

For students looking for a way to fit in at their new school, Garland offers a little advice, “Don’t be scared, just go out there and make new friends because I know if I didn’t, I definitely wouldn’t be as happy as I am now.”