“It gives me great pleasure to inform you that the Committee on Admissions has voted to accept your application for transfer admission to Georgetown University.”

Admittedly, this was a sentence I never thought I’d hear. After nearly three years, two applications, six essays, four letters of recommendation, two interviews, three rejection letters, and a freshman year at The Catholic University of America, I had finally gotten into Georgetown.

It took all of three seconds to decide I would become a transfer member of the Class of 2017. I had won the intellectual equivalent of an Oscar, and my deposit was sent off to the Hilltop faster than I could consider the gravity of what I was deciding to do. When I decided to come to Georgetown, I thought not about what I was leaving behind, but all that I stood to gain. I was flooded with the unadulterated relief and pride that comes with achieving a goal that had been 19 years in the making.

It wasn’t until after the whirlwind that was New Student Orientation, convocation, my first week of classes, the SAC fair, club applications and club rejections, that the dust finally settled and reality hit me. For the first time I considered the fact that I was at a top university (that had rejected me before), enrolled in six classes (that I had not the faintest idea how to succeed in), and knew no one (at a school where everyone seemed to be connected).

It didn’t take me long to realize that I was a Dan Humphrey-level outsider in the hallowed Hoya Hilltop of insiders. Although this was unnerving, my satisfaction of simply making it to Georgetown seemed to carry me though these secondary doubts.

In my experience, the hardest part about transferring has not been starting over, nor adjusting socially and academically. For me, the scariest part of the transferring was the degree of self-discovery that this process demanded of me. Georgetown had been my dream, and because it had been the goal I was working toward for so long, I never took the time to think about what I would do when I actually got here. In my first weeks, I was faced with a question I had never crossed my mind: I had made it to Georgetown, but now what?

For the first time I forced myself to ask: What do I want to do and what kind of person do I want to be? It seemed that everything I had done up until this point was in order to get me into Georgetown. But now that I was here, I realized that I needed to ask myself two much harder questions: what do I really want to do with my life, and how do I want to do it?

Although I do not have a full answer to either of these questions (and whole-heartedly feel that no 20-year-old should), I believe that the most transformative part of the process has been the ability to even ask the questions. Although my decision to transfer to Georgetown has not been without its challenges, there isn’t a day that goes by that I am unhappy that I made the decision to be a Hoya. Overall, the transfer process has reminded me that although there is immense satisfaction in achieving my goals, I can learn just as much through the process it takes to get there.

It may have taken me an extra year to make it to the Hilltop, but now that I am here I am fully ready to enjoy the view, looking forward to unfolding all that is up next.

Bianca DiSanto is a sophomore in the McDonough School of Business.