Before Arriving on Campus: What Should I Take With Me And What Should I Leave Home?

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Filled with anticipation for her first semester at New York University, Stephanie Whited packed everything she could possibly need, especially clothes. Seven suitcases contained just about her entire wardrobe. "I couldn't bear to think that I might want to wear something I had left at home," she remembers.

But when she arrived on campus, Stephanie ended up mostly wearing the same favorites she wore at home in Memphis, Tennessee.

"While I was packing for school and going through my closet at home, I made the mistake of thinking that I might wear things I hadn't worn in at least a year," says Stephanie. "But that never happened. A couple of cool T-shirts, one favorite necklace, two pairs of pants, and comfortable sneakers were all I really needed. A lot of the clothes I never wore just filled up space in my dresser and closet and made unnecessary messes when I would have to dig through them to find what I needed."

All this explains her advice, borne out of experience, when it comes to packing for college: "Bring less clothes." Danielle Kittredge followed the "less is best" game plan when she prepared for her first year at the University of Pittsburgh. Everything went fine . . . until it started to get chilly, as it always does in western Pennsylvania. "I only brought stuff for the fall," she says, and T-shirts didn't exactly keep her toasty after sunset, or in air-conditioned classrooms. Home for Danielle, however, was only about an hour away, in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania, so her folks brought sweaters and sweatshirts early in the semester, leaving one less frostbitten freshman on campus. Motto: Bring enough but not too much.

Before you receive your dorm-room key, you'll have to decide, like Danielle and Stephanie, what to take with you to campus. The choice is appropriate to start this book, because it epitomizes the book's theme: Consider your decisions carefully, because you have to live with the results of them.

Stephanie and Danielle turned out just fine. Their packing missteps didn't cast a cloud over their freshman year. They probably won't ever gather their grandchildren in a circle by the fireplace and relate, "Did I ever tell you about the time I didn't pack properly for college?"

But both wish they did things differently, because it would have given them one less thing to be concerned about during one of the most hectic, thrilling times of
their lives.

Deciding what to take sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, it's easy to remember most of the things you need. But it's also easy to take much more than you need. If you do take more than you need, you might have a hard time sleeping"because you'll barely have room to stand in your cramped room. And it's easy to forget some small items that can make your life easier, as anyone who's tried to open a can of soup with a pocketknife can tell you.

Of course, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. You know the middle, right? It's that big place somewhere between "going overboard" and "woefully unprepared."