With the end of August is coming up quickly, you are probably either in the midst of your frantic college packing as you try shoving eighteen years of belongings into suitcases and storage bins, or simply just waiting to start the new collegiate chapter of your life as a freshman. While you might not need to worry about how to cram three hundred pages of reading into one night or decide whether eating, sleeping or breathing can be reasonably sacrificed quite yet, packing can prove to be nearly as stressful as the first few days of college.
As rising sophomores, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to pass down our wisdom to the incoming freshmen by sharing essential packing tips. Here are five things you do and don’t need your first year in college.
Things You DO Need
1. Rainboots. No matter where you are going to school, chances are you will be walking to and from classes. And chances are, in the nine months you spend at school, there will be rain. And there will be lots of it. Many a times, I sat through a lecture with my toes swimming in my socks. As unpleasant as Microeconomics is when your shoes are dry, it only gets worse with your shoes taking on the role of buckets.
2. Shower shoes. As pleasant as communal bathrooms sound, you’ll definitely be needing shower shoes if you plan on even stepping foot in one of them.
3. Minifridge. It’s pretty obvious why you need a minifridge. Unless you have an inhuman tolerance for sodium and noodles infused with plastic, living off of Ramen and Easy Mac will get really old, really quickly. And unless you also have the inhuman ability to finish your homework at a reasonable hour, chances are, at one point or another, you’ll be awake at 2 a.m. and hungry. Sometimes potato chips and popcorn just won’t cut it.
3. Quarters. Sure, you are paying more than you are worth for your education at this fine institution. But, they will not provide you with free laundry. Upperclassmen may sometimes have a way to finagle with the laundry machines, but chances are it’s time to turn over the couch cushions or start saving up your pocket change. Alternatively, you could just buy new clothing every time you run out, but if that’s the case, you might as well just cough up the two dollars a week.
4. Earplugs. Just trust us. Buy them. At some point during the year, somebody in your dorm will get rip-roaring drunk the night before a final and you will need your precious eight hours. If you treasure your sanity, buy them.
5. Utensils. Unless you plan on resorting back to Medieval Times and eating with your hands, you’ll need some utensils at some point. Even if it’s just to cry over a pint of Ben & Jerry’s the night before a paper worth 75 percent of your grade is due.
Things You Don’t Need
1. Bathrobe. Yes, you read that right. You can buy one and delude yourself into thinking that NOBODY is going to see YOU 75 percent in the buff. But this is college. There is no decency. And a towel can cover just as much, if not more. The strut back from the bathroom to your dorm is neither as dramatic nor as terrifying as you may be picturing it. Save yourself the twenty dollars at Bed, Bath and Beyond, and stick with the towel.
2. A TV. A television is, undoubtedly, a common creature comfort that may make your dorm feel a bit more like a home and a little less like a concrete double-wide shoebox. But unless you’re majoring in underwater basket weaving, you most likely won’t turn it on once. Save yourself the trouble of figuring out how to hook it all up with your limited number of plugs and just come to terms that you may be out of touch with cable TV for the next nine months. Look on the bright side, there’s always Netflix.
3. Xbox/Wii. See: television. No further explanation necessary.
4. The ten thousand storage containers you thought you HAD to buy but will actually just take up too much space and serve as garbage cans. Trust us on this. Although storage space will be limited in your dorm, it won’t be nearly as limited as you first imagine when you’re strategically stacking your tenth load of storage bins into the trunk. The “ShoeStacker 300” looks like a good idea at first, but it won’t stack anything, much less shoes. By the end of the year, you’ll be cleaning out spider carcasses, lost lipsticks, and empty chip bags.
5. Those bright red cowboy boots you think you MIGHT need for a theme party. You won’t need them. You can convince yourself up and down that you will need them and that you’ll undoubtedly ROCK them. But in the end, they are another item you never should have bought to college in the first place. Worse, they’ll be a pain in the butt to find a place in your suitcase for at the end of the year. Take a deep breath, and keep them at home or take them to Goodwill.
