There is a time in every person’s life where one makes drastic changes in search of new beginnings. This process can take on many forms including but not limited to trying a miracle diet, taking flirting advice from a grandparent, washing an ill-tempered kitten, and challenging Steven Hawking to a battle of wits. The most obvious life-alternating event, besides getting married and changing from brand-names to generic, is moving out from a secure home and into the big scary world that we call life.
For those of us who chose to slow down the effects of accurately getting a life and settling down, we have a unique step in between acting as parasites for our parent’s wallets and selling our soul to the first company who will hire us. We are the scared, the accepted, and the penniless. We are college students, and we need to move out of our permanent residences and into our temporary living situations. Simply put, we need to escape our parents’ clutches and secure our most personal belongings without sacrificing our independence and our privacy. Moving to college is going to take planning, skills, and a whole lot of plastic tubs and cardboard boxes.
To start off on the adventure that is moving into a living situation with complete strangers, one must figure out exactly what kind of situation one is moving into. If situation was a studio apartment completely furnished with a full-sized kitchen, one bedroom per resident with its own walk in closet and master bathroom, a common area decorated with couches, a flat screen television, and mini fridge, and balcony, it would be the student’s best wishes to wake up from their dreams and face the student loans. Most likely the situation will be more reminiscent of the typical college dorm room or a poorly designed apartment with little to no permanent lighting fixtures. This situation is going to become a battlefield for the upcoming arguments with roommates from the lack of cleanliness concerning the 30 square feet both parties are forced to share to midnight visitors and the meaning of curfew.
Speaking of roommates, a few phone calls are in order. Once contact is made with future roommates, one can discuss who is going to bring the much needed mini-fridge and who is going to bring the “drinks.” Other items such as crappy televisions that turn the sunniest beaches into snowstorms, DVD-players that only play DVDs from regions two, three, and seventeen, and the always necessary gaming console of procrastination, should be discussed at this time as well. Nobody wants to be stuck in a room with two DVD players but no television. Keep in mind that in battles with roommates, this stuff becomes weapons. A threat to move out and to take one’s computer with them is usually good enough to ensure rights to recently popped popcorn.
Time should also be taken to figure out what one doesn’t need to have right away. Piling car sky high with Harry Potter paraphernalia is not only dangerous, but it also takes up valuable space that could be used to pack more toilet paper. Toilet paper is very important commodity that most people take for granted. Unless one has a rear-end similar to wild bear, the toilet paper provide for students, if provided by the secondary schooling of choice, will only be adequate for starting fires, t.p.ing someone’s yard, and making make-shift plugs to overflow someone else’s toilet. I know this public bathroom toilet paper by a more common name: tissue paper.
The most important stuff that must have room for in the vehicle to freedom is any and all papers and items that they handed out during registration. These items always include very important things such as the address of the new residence and the key to this new residence. Class schedules, tutoring schedules, bus schedules and the ever important break schedules will be within the stack of papers that the staff ever-so harshly handed out to the masses of the uneducated. Every bit of potentially helpful or needed information is held the papers and pamphlets including emergency contact numbers, what to do in an emergency and how a curling-iron losing the ability to curl hair does constitute an emergency. What to do in case hair burst into flame because of a faulty curling-iron is also included in the hand-outs in a pamphlet called “Why One Should Stop Buying Hair Care Products at the Dollar Store.”
Now that the car is packed with the necessities, one is ready to begin the road trip to slightly more independence and to practice sleeping at odd hours of the day. Sleeping during the entire car-ride is not only strongly encouraged but also very helpful. Parents have a tendency to get into an inquisitive mode during long road trips. An unconscious state of mind may not prevent them from questioning every movement coming from the passenger side, but it will prevent the passenger from answering.
Once the car comes to a complete stop and the pilot says it’s okay to unfasten seatbelts, the student must enter into confident yet still co-dependent mode. Parents will be struggling with inner turmoil as their offspring takes the first steps towards becoming independent. Their minds will be filled with worried ponderings like “What if Jamie needs me but can not get a hold of me,” and “Will Hubert’s room make a better guest bedroom or sewing room?” In order to ease their minds and secure the life of one’s bedroom away from college, one needs to assure their parents of academic success and intellectual enlightenment while sprinkling hints of frequent hometown visits in an effort to keep in close contact with family and friends. One must be sure to act friendly towards the roommate in effort to soothe the worried minds of parents. Only after one’s parents have left can one be truly moved in.
Moving away from the life one grew up with can be very difficult. It is important to plan ahead and know what needs to be brought. It takes skill to clam the fears of parents and to keep every hand-out from registration. Moving takes an amount effort that only exerted in top-grade military plans. But no matter how much preparation one goes through or how many guides one reads, only experience can really explain what it is like to live move-in with complete strangers.