It was my second first day of college. How hard could it be?

But as I clutched my class schedule in one hand and a campus map in the other, I wondered if I had transferred to another planet instead of a four-year university. How was I supposed to ask for directions if I couldn't pronounce the names of the buildings? Was Oliphant Hall like elephant--with an "o"?

I was glad I had chosen Chapman, but making the move midstream proved challenging. It meant mastering a new way of doing everything, from making new friends to navigating the strange beast that is WebAdvisor. And in my junior- and senior-level classes, it seemed like I was the only one without a clue.

It all began with orientation, which was a blur. Passionate orientation volunteers jumped and danced around me as I waited in lines. They shoved mugs and pens and stickers and T-shirts--and somewhere along the line, a class schedule and parking permit--at me. I wished for a minute that I'd just stopped at an associate degree.

And then classes started.

Compared to the difficulty of every other aspect of transferring -- even finding my way to each class -- the classes themselves almost seemed easy. I did know how to be a student, after all.

Now, in my third semester at Chapman, I pretty much have the four-year school drill down. Except for WebAdvisor, which somehow still confuses me.

But did transferring have to be so traumatic? It seems that orientation, at least, could be improved by providing different services to transfer students than freshmen.

About 500 other students transferred to Chapman when I did, and many I've met had a similarly difficult time adjusting. Some students came from other four-year universities. Some went to community college because their high school grades weren't stellar. Others, like me, went to community college to put off having to pay the thousands of dollars they would spend on tuition at four-year schools.

By the time we arrived at Chapman, most of us knew how the college student's life worked. Yet we were lumped into the same group as the incoming freshmen for most of the events during orientation, where we learned more about dorm life than how to be sure we would graduate on time. And for students like me who were just four semesters away from the day we would toss the tassel, it didn't help much.

Perhaps at future orientations, transfer students won't have to sit through lectures about living away from home for the first time, and will receive information they can actually use.

Today, when I see new transfers looking around with their own maps and schedules, I have two reactions. First, I chuckle knowingly to myself. Then I go see if I can help. Even though I still can't really pronounce "Oliphant," I can at least steer them in the right direction.