Boomer Sooner to WHOOSH

By Poonum Desai, Guest Blogger

Choosing a college is never easy. It’s the first real chapter in life where you’re pretty much alone. That really hit me when four days before the end of April of my senior year, my dad just popped the question, “So, have you decided what college you’re going to?” It was like he had asked me “So have you figured out your life yet?”

I actually really wanted my parents to make the decision for me. I didn’t know what to look for in a school. I just knew I wanted to go somewhere with a good study abroad program, a good business school, and football.  Yes, you read right, football. I’m a born and raised Texan, I gotta have my seasonal dose of college football.  

The night before May 1, I was sitting at the kitchen table looking at my two options: OU and UT Dallas, and I decided to choose OU. Many people have asked me, “Was getting away from home a reason you went there?” I’m not saying it was a giant contributing factor, but if you have the option of getting away from your parents who still think midnight is the time when 22-year-olds go to sleep so you need to be asleep by 11 at the latest, yea, living on my own for a bit would not be the most horrid thing ever.

But as the headline suggests, I’m now a Comet. Why? First of all, I was worried about paying out-of-state tuition. I started out thinking, hey, in the end it will all pay off when I get a job at a firm I really want to work for. The reality that having a job right out of college is not a guarantee hit me mid-semester. That was a big reason I returned home.

The second reason was the social atmosphere. Let’s talk about the concept of “partying” for a second. I love to have fun. But how many shots or beer you can chug or how much of whatever substance you can smoke before you regurgitate your intestines should not determine who you are.  At OU, I felt that my thoughts on partying did not necessarily match those of a lot of the other students, which is fine; it was just an indicator to me that I needed to relocate to a school that places academics on a higher pedestal.

When I was at OU, I started to think, “How happy can I be here for four years?” The thought of staying there that long made me cringe a little, and that’s when I had the epiphany: I needed to transfer to UT Dallas.

Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of awesome things at OU. The professors were some of the coolest people I have ever met. The campus was gorgeous and even though it wasn’t their best football season, the games were still pretty awesome. 

But I felt UTD fit my personality perfectly. I love my fellow peers. As a campus, I feel we are a bit more reserved, but if I talk to you, you will talk to me back and then BAM, I just made a new friend on the elevator. The professors are so passionate about helping students that I’ve considered ditching my dream to be a talk show host to come back and teach at the university. The campus is close enough to my house so I can easily make trips home, but far enough for my mom to not come check on me. The business school (which I’m in along with EPPS) never fails to stun me. It’s almost as if there is nothing in this world that UTD students haven’t accomplished. And I’m a part of that school. 

I seriously am so excited to enter the work world now because I know I’m going to enter it as prepared as possible. And although there is no football, our intermural sports are really impressive. I really love it here. I am a proud Comet who can’t wait to blow the socks off the world. Transferring to UT Dallas was best step out of the many I have and will take to achieve everything I set my mind to.  Go Comets, WHOOSH.