The start of the academic year is once again ahead of us and it brings a wide variety of emotions to everyone involved, especially to students and their parents. If you are going to be a freshman, you are probably very excited and eager to face the college life. The feelings are a bit different for your parents – a bittersweet mix of pride, happiness, nostalgia and of course, a little bit fear because the birds are flying away from the nest. Your life is going to change and you will have to take a lot of responsibilities as a grown-up. The first big test is deciding where to live and what to take with you in your new place. Moving to college may be a bit stressful so make sure you plan everything in advance, compile a checklist and stick to it. If you still are not sure what are you going to need, this article will clear a lot of things for you. But first – choose between living in a campus dorm and renting an own apartment.
Living In A Campus Dorm
Life in the dorm will be once-in-a-lifetime experience. You will have plenty of opportunities for socializing because you will share the dorm usually with more than a hundred students. Living in a room with one or more strangers may be a little awkward at first but once you get to know each other, you will probably start to love it. And of course, you will live close to the campus so you won’t have to commute. One of the biggest advantages of living in a dorm besides the social factor is that you won’t have to worry about the monthly bills for electricity or the Internet because they are included in the price you have paid before moving in. Some of the dorms even have their own cleaning service – for more information you should contact the Housing Department at your university where they can provide some really valuable information for you.
Make yourself comfortable but remember that keeping your dorm room in order is not a bad thing.
What to bring with you in the dorm
You probably love your desk or the comfy couch you bought last year but you don’t have to take them with you. You have enough on your mind already to worry about moving furniture. This is a list of some things that you will most certainly need after you move to college dorm:
- Appliances – consider things like an iron, a hair dryer, a microwave and a mini fridge, a coffee maker (if you can’t live without your morning caffeine dose), a mini vacuum, a blender, etc. Have in mind that some of these appliances are allowed only in common areas and some may not be allowed at all. Contact the university to make sure you don’t take something with you that you won’t be able to use.
- Clothes – yes, you will need clothes for your college life in case you wondered. It depends heavily on the location of your college. If the average temperature will be low, make sure that you will have warm clothes, jackets and boots alongside the underwear, T-shirts, pajamas, jeans and blouses. Squeeze something more formal between the casual clothes – you never know when you will have to suit up.
Moving to college can actually be fun if you plan it carefully.
- Supplies – make sure you have enough notebooks, pencils, pens, tape, scissors and everything else that you might use for your classes. Besides the office supplies, you will need some laundry and bedding supplies like bed sheets, pillowcases, towels, a mattress pad, washing powder, softener, toiletries like shampoo, soap, toothpaste, deodorant, razor blades. (The list goes even longer if you are a girl.)
- Electronics – the computer is pretty much essential for your studies so it must be one of the first things on your checklist. It will help you to stay connected to your friends and family, too. Your music player will help you go through some of the nights of intense studying. You could take things like a TV, a DVD player, a printer, a video game console or an audio system with you but make sure you first check with your future roommates. After all, you won’t need two or three audio systems in your room.
- Furniture – pretty much every college dorm provides basic furnishing so most of the times you won’t have to worry about moving big pieces of furniture. Before moving, get in touch with the university to be sure what you should bring by yourself and what is already provided.
- Decorative – bring something from you to the whole appearance of the room. You have to make the place yours so make yourself comfortable, bring your imagination to life and decorate the room with photos, posters, desk lamps or any other piece of decoration that will ease your adaptation to the college life.
- Documents – the last thing that you would want to do is forget you documents before leaving for college. Arrange them in a folder so they will be easier to find. Put in your bank, enrollment and financial aid documents, your passports, student ID. Of course, you must always have your personal ID, driver’s license, credit and debit cards with you.
Renting An Off-Campus Apartment
The off-campus apartment offers you more privacy and comfort.
If you don’t want to live in a dorm, you have another choice – to rent an apartment. As everything in life this option has its supporting and opposing arguments. You will have much more privacy away from the campus. You could choose for yourself if you want to live alone or share the rent with a friend or two. Renting an apartment decreases the natural socialization opportunities but it doesn’t stop you from making a big welcoming party and invite your whole class, for example. Choose your apartment carefully – search for a place close to the campus so you could avoid long commuting, look for a safe neighborhood and always have in mind what the actual cost will be – the rent fee plus all the additional expenses like electricity, water, the Internet.
What to bring with you in the apartment
The apartment gives you much more freedom than the dorm. Of course you will need everything from the list above for your apartment, too. There are two main differences between the two options:
- Furniture – you may rent an unfurnished apartment. If this is the case, you will have to buy every piece of furniture that you will need – bed, wardrobe, tables, chairs, etc. Another thing that you might want to do is move furniture from your home to your new place. The whole process can be really stressful for young people (and their parents, too). If you want, you could leave the whole process to the experts and fill our free moving quote.
- Appliances – unlike the dorm, here you have the complete freedom – you could take everything you want with you without having to ask someone if it is allowed. It is all up to you.
Regardless of your decision – dorm or apartment, you should always keep some things at hand so you can be able to access them straight away when you need them – probably the most important ones are your documents and your medications. Here you can find a complete moving to college checklist.
So now that you are fully prepared for the big step, it’s time to go into action. Don’t leave everything for the last day and you will save yourself a large amount of stress. And most importantly – be yourself, develop your skills and have fun. After all, this is the point of the college life, isn’t it?
