<p>Like you, we live on the west coast and d is going to school on the east coast My mom and I helped move her in her first semester. We flew on Jet Blue which allowed each of us 3 checked bags to haul all her things back. By the end of the term she had friends who where local who offered to store some of her things and she flew home with what she could. Went back on her own each time there after. In two weeks her sister, dad and I will be flying back for her graduation. This will be her dads first time to see where she has been going to school. She will be coming home a few days after we return for about 6 weeks before her new job/career starts in the Washington DC area. I always hoped she would come back to the west coast but job and now fiance are back east :)</p>
<p>We did the jetblue thing with six suitcases for first year move-in. We went back the second year but were not really needed. Dad was just an extra laborer. Mom was an extra apt. cleaner.</p>
<p>Not if I can help it.</p>
<p>Nopety dope dope. Had the drop off and shopping trip and rent a car and tears year 1. Year 2 - drove her to the airport:). California to Newark.....frankly, she asked about Year 2 and I said, "Honey, do you need me?" Even she had to answer no...</p>
<p>Clearly, it makes a difference if you are within driving distance of the schools. There is no way we are paying for D to ship everything back across country for the summer and then back to Boston in the fall. I told her back last fall to find a friend to store her stuff or make another arrangement. </p>
<p>Well, just spoke with very resourceful and independent DD. She has already arranged to move stuff to a storage unit 2 miles from campus with 3 roommates. She tells me she has plenty of friends with cars to help. She will fly home with 2 suitcases and her laptop. We talked about the fall and we are brainstorming the idea of the family flying out to go to Cape Cod or somewhere special for a short vacation prior to her return to Boston. Since she is working 2 jobs and teaching private voice lessons this summer, we won't get our usual family vacation in July. We can drop her off at Tufts, but since she goes back early to sing with her a cappella group, she can't move in to the dorm for another week. We will leave her to her friends and travel up to Maine or somewhere away from Boston and the August humidity.
Younger brother has not seen Tufts, Boston or NE and is excited at the idea of seeing the area, colleges and where his big sis is living. This will double as a pre-college trip for him as he is a high school sophomore this fall.</p>
<p>I agree that it is a big difference if you are within driving distance. I offered to help my son move in this past summer, now that he is at a drive-to school -- but in the end it turned out that the passenger seat in the car was better filled with boxes than a human being who would need to get back - and his keeping the car was an important part of the equation.</p>
<p>For flying -- my d. convinced me that I would be more of a hindrance than a help. And shipping boxes can be a lot cheaper than the cost of an extra round trip air fare.</p>
<p>After freshman year- when just H & I went to help move her in, the subsequent years her sister went as well.
Actually- we would all go as a family ( although perhaps we even had the two girls go down on the train one year- to free up more room for stuff)- stay in a hotel together one night- then the next day drop both of them off- and let them get set up.
D#2 hit it off with D#1s friends & helped them with organization ;)</p>
<p>D#1 had to be at school earlier than freshmen to help with orientation so it wasn't crowded or hectic, but it was a nice transition to the new school year.</p>
<p>In the spring- H, usually went by himself to pick her up at the end of the year, but last year I stayed to help move out of her apt after graduation, and then helped moved stuff to the redhouse where she lived for the summer.
( she got herself moved into her new place)</p>
<p>I did. D stored things, and the unit is a distance - need a car - she doesn't have one. She needed me to haul and help later. Still needed a few runs to the store, since the room was different, and we had to get a few different things. And I wouldn't miss it, since I can picture her there while she is away. Next year will be different - D doing Study Abroad. Now that will be a really tough year!</p>
<p>We went Freshman year with the usual baggage. S also drove his own car. At the end of freshman year, he threw away a ton of stuff that was dirty worn out, etc. and squeezed all the rest back into his old SUV and came home alone. </p>
<p>An off campus apartment was rented for soph. year. I've never laid eyes on the place. S and roommates handled the whole transaction. They rented a U-Haul truck during the summer and hauled all the big stuff back to school themselves. In August, S only had to pack clothes and small stuff into his car for the return trip since all the big stuff was already there.</p>
<p>He had absolutely no desire for us to accompany him as the roommates were returning too and they clearly did not need parental supervision, LOL.</p>
<p>He goes to a big state school 2.5 hours from home. We have not been back since we dropped him off in Aug. of Freshman year. He has his truck there and can come home whenever he wants (and can get off work). Since he works on weekends and we work during the week, there's never a convenient time for us to go visit.<br>
He loves his independent life and would not have it any other way.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree that it depends on if your school is driving distance. But it also depends on the car situation. We told our son that he would have to pay for insurance and parking if he kept our spare car at school (about a 3 hour drive). Since kids do fine without cars on this campus, he has passed on this offer. His second year is next year and he will NOT have a car - so I guess we'll be on duty to help him move his stuff again. I can't see making him ship his stuff - and there's not enough room in his friends cars.</p>
<p>DH flew to NYC to help DD get settled in her freshman year. Everything she had fit in the luggage allowance for 2 people. The upperclassmen helping her move in were amazed at the economy. They were seeing kids whose parents drove them in with a van stuffed to the gills. </p>
<p>And we have friends who had to make TWO trips with their daughter's stuff in a minivan--they could do it cause the college was only a couple of hours away.</p>
<p>I guess you do what you have to--or what you can get away with. ;)</p>
<p>We tried to convince my son to rent a storage space for the summer but he said he didn't really have that much stuff and it wouldn't be a big deal to pack it all up. He came home last Wednesday and his car was packed tighter then the Clampets pick-up on The Beverly Hill Billy's. He couldn't get to his glove compartment to look for a map because the front seat was so full. He was amazed (!) at all the stuff he had. Hopefully, next year he will listen to Mom OR bring home unneeded stuff at the breaks.</p>
<p>Didn't help after the first year. Thankfully, she found someplace to store most of her stuff for the summer--but still brought/shipped too much stuff home.</p>
<p>D has been been mostly on her own as far as packing & move-ins after the first year. This impulse was accelerated on her part when she was "packing up" at the end of her first year when she stayed over late because of a college orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall. She had represented herself as "almost done" packing up her room (she was moving to a different House for a summer job)...and when she opened the door to her room the vision resembled what I imagine the aftermath of the battle of Marengo to have looked like. As she packed, I staggered down three flights of stairs to the cellar where things were "stored" until the following Fall. Took longer than I meant down there, too, because as near as I could tell, many of her classmates' notion of "storage" was "walk as far as you can into the room and then drop your stuff or, turn to either side and just stack it precariously on top of someone else's stuff, never mind that there are several feet of good airspace between you and the wall." I wound up rationalizing quite a bit of storage while I was down there, making more room for new stuff in the process.</p>
<p>Although I loved being needed, second year I often stayed outside and didn't enter the living quarters. Noticed almost no evidence of Mom's walking anywhere in the boys dorm rooms and respected that. The brief time I was in there I tried to rearrange the closet, so ha. Best if I stayed in the parking lot handing over boxes and was not wandering the halls.</p>
<p>Will undoubtedly do so, however we are in easy driving distance. We are also storing a few things for kids who couldn't carry or ship everything home.</p>
<p>I moved my daughter into her apt. 2nd year. Tons of work. </p>
<p>She does not have a car at school, so no way could she have done it on her own. I am leaving in a few weeks to move her stuff into storage. She starts an internship the monday after finals and has to work. As stated she does not have a car--and I have the weakest daughter on the planet--we laugh at how she can't lift anything.</p>
<p>(Can't make too much fun of her--because she does have a slight medical condition that may have something to do with this.)</p>
<p>If you do make the effort, you have the trump card in that you made the effort. It will be very stressful for your daughter to do this herself. If you are there, you can take her for a meal, make more arrangements, provide support, meet her roommates.
Take this from a parent who sent her daughter 1000's of miles away to college and lost her forever.My daughter married and moved to the hometown of her husband .Although I am very happy for my daughter I am not about to move from the town I have lived in my entire life to be close to her famly.And she has become a part of the region she now lives in.I am not. So make the effort if money is not a factor. If money is a factor make her move to a college closer to you.</p>
<p>backhandgrip: I have to chuckle at the last comment: "Make her move to a college closer to you." Since when can we "make" them do anything once they are in college. D's college is pretty much paid for and is not dependent on us for paying tuition, so there is no "making" her do anything. That conversation happened before applying only to colleges 3000 miles away and it didn't get us anywhere. You are living one of my biggest fears and I feel your pain!!! </p>
<p>D will be going back to Boston at least a week before the dorms open, so we won't be moving her in. She will stay with friends who live off campus as her a cappella group rehearses and performs at freshman orientation and then starts auditions all before the dorms are open to 2nd year students. So she will go back early and move in on her own......We will take her back a few days before that and go to Cape Cod or Maine for a short family vacation.</p>
<p>D will be moving into her first apartment to begin her Soph year. We will move her into that, then our moving days are done. </p>
<p>Until S finishes HS in four years...</p>