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<p>By Joan Cary, Special to the Tribune
July 25, 2012</p>
<p>This time last summer Sharon Adams, of Wheaton, was consumed with helping her twin son and daughter pack for freshman year at college. She was stacking a mountain of ready-to-go items in the living room and efficiently checking those items off her list.</p>
<p>Now, as another school year approaches, the living room has become a storage area again. But as an experienced college parent, Adams is more confident about what her children need, will use and won’t use (such as filtered water pitchers), and how guys and girls handle the college experience differently.</p>
<p>It’s part of a process certainly not unique to the Adamses of preparing for what hopefully results in a smooth transition from the comforts of home to the adventures of college. It’s a process that brings together parents, their children, roommates, college staff and for some, the occasional twinge of nostalgia.</p>
<p>And it often starts with the checklist.</p>
<p>Anyone who has gone away to college or sent a child off to college knows the list what needs to be done, what needs to be bought, what needs to be packed . And the conversations about what’s on the list often vary depending on whether the student is a boy or a girl.</p>
<p>Talks between Sharon Adams and her daughter, Tori, last year often came while shopping, or they triggered more shopping. Tori was going to the University of Alabama in early August for sorority rush and needed a wardrobe that met the sorority dress code. She needed the right dresses, the right sandals, the right colors, the right linens, and the right storage items to organize all the right things she was taking all the way to Tuscaloosa, Ala.</p>
<p>With son David, who was just days behind Tori in his move to the University of Missouri, the conversations happened more at home. Sharon said they went more like this:</p>
<p>“David, you have to think about this ”</p>
<p>“All right, Mom, but can we just do it later?”</p>
<p>Or, on a rare trip to the store together:</p>
<p>“David, what do you think of these (sheets, towels)?”</p>
<p>“I like that. OK, let’s go.”</p>
<p>The Adamses survived packing and unpacking the SUV twice, driving 740 miles to Alabama and 375 to Columbia, Mo., the next week.</p>
<p>Asked for his advice, Sharon’s husband, Phil Adams, suggested that parents not overstress the move.</p>
<p>“Just don’t overthink it,” he said.</p>
<p>While well intentioned, that is a comment his wife believes many women would find amusing.</p>
<p>“He can say that because moms do the shopping and packing and dads load the car and drive,” said Sharon, who this year only has to move Tori because David spent the summer in Missouri.</p>
<p>Parents say it is easier on the back, less costly and less time consuming to take a son to college than to deliver a daughter. But daughters who are organized and involved are also freeing their parents of packing and, well, nagging.</p>
<p>“My daughter would see things, think about things, and then want to go look at them. There were many more days of shopping with her,” said Sharon Adams. “With David, it was more about function. He knew he needed a TV and a fridge and he wanted something to put his head down on at the end of the day.”</p>
<p>Moving in was another experience.</p>
<p>“With the girls it was an all-day event, oohing and aahing over other girls’ things. With David, he hardly let me make his bed,” Adams said. “But that’s OK. That’s how he handled it.”</p>
<p>The Adams family is not alone in the situation.</p>
<p>Pattie Rooney, of Glen Ellyn, is preparing to send her third and last child, Rick, off to Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., in August. Daughter Colleen, 22, will return to Iowa State, and son Tyler, 21, to the University of Missouri. Their Ping-Pong table is now the sorting table.</p>
<p>“My daughter immediately wanted to prepare for what her room was going to be all about at college. There was a lot of talking between roommates. She wanted everything new and matching, and everything to fit neatly somewhere,” Rooney recalls.</p>
<p>Her sons, she said, while excited about college, preferred to postpone the shopping until “next week.”</p>
<p>“I’m almost relieved to be packing a son,” Rooney said. “It is so much easier. Boys tend to just want the biggest TV they can fit in the room. And you stress less by the third child. He (Rick) can take things from the spare bedroom that we don’t use. His towels came fromWal-Mart. He is fine with that.”</p>
<p>Colleges are ready</p>
<p>Families are not the only ones anticipating move-in day. College housing offices are busy preparing for the August deluge of girls and guys, some enthused and some subdued. Most schools have a checklist online to direct new students on what to bring and what to leave at home. What is OK and what isn’t varies from school to school.</p>
<p>Furry four-legged pets appear to be on the “not welcome” list everywhere, as are candles. Fish may be OK. It is best to check the list about irons, toasters, coffee makers, plug-in air fresheners and extension cords, to mention a few things. DePaul University allows surge protectors but no extension cords.</p>
<p>And if you forget the list? Bed Bath & Beyond has the checklist for hundreds of colleges available in their 995 stores throughout 50 states and Canada, said company spokeswoman Jessica Joyce. She said their free service, “Shop Here. Pick Up There,” is also very popular. Shoppers go to their local store, choose their items, and then pick them up boxed and ready at the store closest to their campus.</p>
<p>“We love move-in day. It is our favorite,” said Lindsey Myers, assistant director of marketing and public relations in housing at Northern Illinois University. They will welcome 4,500 students into residence halls (no longer called dorms) this year.</p>
<p>“We certainly see it all. There are students with more stuff, and then there are the minimalists. There are those who come with everything ready, and those who come and write out a shopping list as they unpack,” she said. “It varies tremendously.”</p>
<p>Susan Teggatz, director of housing for the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the school will house 1,300 to 1,500 freshmen; she has noticed a trend toward increased parent involvement in the moving process. More parents accompany students on move-in day, and feedback and questions to the housing office come in much faster than they did in the past, thanks to cellphones and texting.</p>
<p>Roommate info</p>
<p>It helps if roommates converse or text before moving in, said Tessa VanPaepeghem, marketing and communications manager in housing at DePaul. “There is always the issue of wanting to bring more than maybe you have room for,” she said. Each DePaul unit is limited to one TV, one refrigerator and one microwave.</p>
<p>Adams said her daughter talked at length with roommates about who would bring what. Her son and his roommate had two important text conversations: Who is bringing the TV? And who is bringing the fridge? Electronic games systems are also important.</p>
<p>Twins Michael and Rebecca Schraiber, of Deerfield, will leave for their freshman year at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, their parents’ alma mater, on Aug. 19. Rebecca found her roommate on Facebook and has communicated at length with her. Michael, his mother, Judy, said, has not been in touch with his roommate and is not too concerned.</p>
<p>“They will stalk each other on Facebook. Check out the normalcy of each other, and that’s all they need,” she said.</p>
<p>The Schraiber family’s trip to U. of I. is apt to stir memories of when parents Steve and Judy attended the university when students lugged heavy TVs if they had a TV at all, when there were no computers or cellphones, and calling home meant using the land line once a week when the rates were cheapest.</p>
<p>“No texting. No constant communication. Music was a boom box or a stereo if you had one, with giant speakers,” Judy Schraiber remembers.</p>
<p>Just how important is all of this buying and packing?</p>
<p>Phil Adams is pretty certain most students could survive with a lot less and buy anything else they need near the campus. The weeks of gathering mountains of stuff to go off to college is, he suspects, “partly driven by our anxiety over whether or not we have done everything we possibly could as parents to ready them and ourselves for the big day.”</p>
<p>“I think there is a big psychological component to why we parents do what we do in getting ready to send our kids to college. …” Adams said. “In short, we do this stuff out of love.”</p>
<p>One thing Sharon Adams noticed about sending her only two off to college, she said. Just as she became completely OK with having them gone, the first year was over and her daughter was calling to say, “Come get me.”</p>