Is there any advice for life during transition?

You know those are all good questions. I usually go to tsroadmap.com when things like that come up in general, but I'll try to give you more of an answer here.

First about me, I was a non-traditional student. I was a damage controlman (firefighter) in the Navy for four years. So I pretty much went to college a decade after everyone else.

So I did not transition when I was at school, just started going to support groups and finding opportunities to dress as myself. I met someone that had though. Well a couple someones. One of them was FtM, and had an opportunity to get his "plumbing out" and top surgery done, and do a lot of his social stuff, over the summer. His hormones had largely taken effect the two semesters before then. So it was very close to that fictional TV "gal on Friday, guy on Monday" situation. The other one was MtF and was visibly gender variant, but she really OWNED IT. Her femininity was really obvious and I thought she was cute. She had a way of taking features that came from her male puberty, and using them somehow to accentuate her femininity. It's hard to describe and I could never pull it off. Anyway she was a vegetarian and just the nicest person. There was a lot of campus housing that was LGBT friendly and she stayed there.

I can say that modern schools, you lose track of people unless you make an effort between semesters. You make a new group of friends every six months pretty much. So just because of that I think it's probably the best place to transition. People there are also smart and, I hate to say it but it's true, being smart they're more LGBT accepting.

So I am transitioning AND job searching, and can talk a little more about that. I am applying places I feel comfortable being gender variant - universities, starbucks 'till I find a career job, that kind of thing - under my new name. I click either "female" or "I do not want to say" (it so sucks that that option isn't always there, worse yet, it's sometimes missing when "I don't want to say" IS THERE for race stuff, ugh!) on those EO forms. I am applying other places - some computer jobs (although some companies that have a really good rep fall under the first category), basically anything that pays well and I'm not sure how tolerant they would be - under my old name. I have an on-the-job transition plan at those places. I also have a sought after degree; one of the reasons I got it is because I am transitioning and don't want worst comes to worst to be a problem for me.

I'm doing things that way because while I am coming along, I don't feel like I can comfortably present reliably to the point where people will "ma'am" me without asking, and I don't want something that will destroy my confidence mid-interview. When I'm among people I know won't care, then even if they ask I still wont' be put off, I know they'll be looking at my abilities only. The rule of thumb I see everywhere online is to do what is most comfortable. I am deciding to disclose sometimes because it's something that I will have to do eventually anyway, and it would be soooo awesome to work somewhere without fear.

And on that note the hrc has a page that lets you search only for trans-friendly employers. 100% means they have health insurance that covers at least hormones. If you want to transition between jobs, or between school and your first job, companies you find there are the best resource.

She can speak for herself, but I would chat up DhammaGamer if I didn't answer everything about this, she knows her stuff. She tipped me off to Starbucks covering basically everything. If you don't get a job right out of college and need a tide-over, I would look there.

So with banks and everything else I am just starting to look into that mess. It looks like the best way to do things is to get at least some documentation in your new name. From what I have read, Social Security is the easiest. They just want a therapist's letter. You can have a screening session at a reduced price, mine was $70, although I paid for a full session because I had other things I needed a therapist and not a screener for. Other things like birth certs are harder, some states like the one I was born in, Alaska, want you to get "bottom surgery" - and an orchie won't cut it, I did ask specifically about that. But once you have an SS card with your new name and gender, everywhere that IDs you wants one of two things:

* A passport (there's others but they're similar), or
* A photo ID and Social Security card (again, you can use other stuff for SS but the other stuff is similar)

So at that point all you have to do is get a driver's license, and no one will care about your birth cert. To do that, you do a name change, and to do THAT most places, you pay a newspaper roughly $50 to run an article saying you changed your name, and pay a court $50 - $100. Then you just take that documentation to a DMV which will charge you $20 for a new license.

And then you're set for everything, including bank accounts.