When I announced my decision to transfer to Binghamton University from my previous college, most of the people I expected to support my decision instead resorted to questioning my motives, and asking me if it was what I really wanted.

It wasn’t as if a seed of doubt hadn’t already planted itself in the back of my mind, whispering that I was making the wrong choice. I wasn’t quite naive enough not to realize that transferring in as a junior (if the Admissions office ever officially decided to evaluate my previous credits), would mean that in many respects I was starting off like a freshman all over again.

I knew that I would be subjected to making new friends, navigating a new town, analyzing new professors and trying to find “my place” in the whole scheme of things.

It also didn’t help that the most prominent first hand account of a BU education came from a self-acclaimed connoisseur of Binghamton, a contributing commenter to the Web site www.urbandictionary.com. Under the code name “Tau Phi Beta,” the helpful critic let me know that Binghamton is, “an industrial wasteland where parents send their spoiled Long Island kids to get an NYU-comparable education, but the kids are too fucking bratty to accept anything other than going to Boston University and having their balls powdered while their new BMW’s get a new pair of rims. Oh, and the cloudy weather makes everyone insane. Smoke weed everyday.”

While that image of Binghamton dampened my initial excitement of a new beginning, I chose to drive to the campus on Aug. 23 anyway, and give it a try myself. After all, if I started being attacked by a group of Long Island kids screaming, “Go Boston University,” while their friends ran behind them throwing Johnson & Johnson baby powder at their balls, I only lived an hour and a half from campus and therefore could quickly escape.

Luckily, this unsavory scenario hasn’t yet presented itself, and neither have any other unpleasant situations that I was worried or forewarned about. That said, the cloudy weather and frequent rain has started to make me twitch, but I have not resorted to smoking weed everyday … yet. After all, it would only be appropriate to make the police blotter in Pipe Dream after the SECOND week of classes.