<p>Our first time, dd#1 as a freshman at Hillsdale: I'd been whining about how much stuff she had--until I saw everyone else's amount... Visited with a family in the parking lot--turns out they live in the next small town over the CO mountains, though we'd never met them since the girls did different sports. Fast forward to senior year: dd took off with my minivan crammed with 3 kayaks, camping gear, and a bike, but no furniture. I assume she got tired of sleeping on a hardwood floor and found some somewhere. </p>
<p>Dd#2 was great; she went through the doors of Alumni Hall at USNA with her shot record, her driver's license and passport. The Navy provides everything else! We brought her pitiful little bag home with her civilian clothes 6 weeks later at Plebe Parent Weekend. No civilian clothes until Christmas! We brought her cello out at PPW.</p>
<p>Kat--I wish I had been at Princeton to see that!!!!! Priceless.</p>
<p>We just got back from returning our junior S to Columbia. Of course, we're dealing with the dregs of Ernesto here in the NE, so everything took place in wind and rain. And city move-ins are normally a special circle of Hell--crowded streets, no parking, elevator lines around the block, after standing on other lines to get the bin to carry the stuff up the elevator.</p>
<p>well, the gods must have been smiling on us--spot opened up in the street right across from the dorm just as we pulled up, got bin right away, no elevator lines. Maybe the weather scared everyone else away.</p>
<p>Only hiccup was the inevitable forgetting of some important computer accessory (D's freshmen yr, it was the mouse, S last year, the printer.) Today it was the keyboard, which was apprently at home on the diningroom table. I made it through the monsoons to the bookstore and bought the cheapest possible--cost less than the tolls to go home and get the old one.</p>
<p>I do want to also report a wonderful meeting with a CC friend (mom of another Penn athlete) and an almost-meeting with another CC friend (we were in close proximity but didn't know it). Long live CC!!</p>
<p>georgemma, that's such a nice story! How great that you got to meet Nora after all the e-mails, and it's nice that she found a friend in your D since she's so far from home. I love to hear about these CC meetings :)</p>
<p>H and I can hardly believe our good fortune: D's a minimalist, brought the few things she cared about (warm wool bedding, instrument, a few clothes, iPod & MacBook) in our minivan, with room left over for 3 other adults and their luggage. Dropped her off at Reed's half-empty parking lot for a pre-orientation rafting trip, helped her plug in a phone and configure her laptop for Internet access, then took off northward for a short vacation while she was shepherded by orientation staff. Good-byes were painless because we were returning in a few days for parent orientation. By the time we returned, she'd set up her room, socialized a bit with other early arrivals, learned her way around campus and beyond, and pretty much asserted her independence. Caught a week of sunny weather in the great American North West. Her divided double in sub-free is clean and airy, with a big well-appointed kitchen/lounge/wraparound balcony-with-a-view nearly next door. Neat, quiet, considerate roommate with interesting stories to tell. D drew the BEST professor as her adviser and got all the classes she'd hoped for</p>
<p>Minimalist I can give you. My D thought she had 24 hours to pack the van. Due to an emergency, she was awaken with 4 hours to pack her instrument, a suitcase, and make it to the airport. She was able to take a pillow and sheets. I guess she had to borrow a towel. Hopefully, she has enought to get by for a week or two until we make the drive.</p>
<p>We had a painless move in - yay for small, but organized colleges! Move in at Roanoke was scheduled for 9:30 - 2:30 last Saturday, with an almost mandated talk by the college big shots scheduled at 3:00. Our son had driven down to Roanoke the previous Sunday by himself and had had a week long (optional) outdoor freshman orientation. He had taken stuff for backpacking, his bedding and just a few other things since they had said not to bring everything for move in. Turns out the kids were allowed in their actual dorm rooms and he could have moved in a lot more, but they did not want these kids to take over the dorm room before the roommates got there.</p>
<p>We left just before 7 am Saturday morning and arrived on camus around 1:00. Son had done all the paperwork stuff; signing in, dropped a class and added another one, picked up his books and helped a few people move in before we got there. As soon as we pulled up to his dorm, we were swarmed by kids from a service organization. They unpacked and carried EVERYTHING up to his room on the fourth floor. We had to guard our own luggage to make sure that wasn't moved too! Since we were probably some of the last people to move in, we just left our car in the parking spot next to the door and spent the next hour unpacking and hooking everything in.</p>
<p>Roommate and parents had arrived just before us so we did everything together. Roanoke has a two day move-in orientation program so once we moved son in there were talks and social things to attend. The weather was great, the campus spotless and very pretty and the people were friendly. Oh, and son seemed very much at home!</p>
<p>kathiep: I agree, smaller colleges are nice! Okay, now for part 2 of move in story for our 4th and last child. </p>
<p>Our 4th child's college is a smaller college with 1000 freshman and one hour from our home. The nice part about this move in was that when we parked on the quad it was very organized. A young lady tagged my son's things and the frats and sport teams took everything up to the door of my son's dorm room.It went very quickly and there was a barbeque for parents and students on the quad. We sat at tables and spoke with families from Ohio and Michigan and enjoyed the fact that had move in been one day earlier would have had tropical storm Ernesto to contend with!The mandatory parents meeting consisted of a movie made of the students during orientation. It was fast paced and funny. Different upperclassmen spoke about their freshman year and leaving home and this brought me to a tear. I did make my son's bed. Yes, I did. And then we hugged again, made our pleas to email and phone and left. It was nice. The nicest move in of all 4 children. </p>
<p>Sign. Came home and contemplated the garden. Became misty eyed at surveying son's room. Sign.........Now it is time to plan visit to my daughter's family . I have not seen her new home yet as they have visited here recently and am anxious to play with my grandchild. Life is good.</p>
<p>S stored some things with SmartMovers last spring. SmartMovers was the official Boston University storage company. He arranged for his stuff to be delivered on Wednesday. Wednesday came, no SmartMovers. He and about a hundred other students started e-mailing, calling, etc. I called and was told that instead of the 20 laborers they expected, only five showed up, but they would stay late until everything was delivered. Didnt happen. S and his roommate, had no linens or towels. Wednesday night. He slept on a bare mattress.</p>
<p>When the administration heard about this, they mobilized immediately. BU hired moving companies to get the students' stuff from the SmartMovers warehouse and bring them to Boston. The university response was incredible. Ive got to hand it to BU.</p>
<p>Great stories. I love Katwkittens' Princeton hillbillies image. I'm jealous of Kinshasa's school response, since S's storage stuff has gone AWOL.</p>
<p>S flew out Friday - junior year, first year in apt (bumped from dorm) in NYC. I said good-bye from home, because our shipment arrived from Germany the same day, and someone had to tell the movers where to put things. H drove him to the airport.</p>
<p>He took laptop, instrument, 1 suitcase of clothes, and 1 suitcase of music. Thought he'd stored bedding in his locker, but apparently it went in the storage co boxes instead. So he has nothing.</p>
<p>He is sharing the one-room apt with another student. That student was accompanied by his mom for the weekend, and they brought an air mattress with them to sleep on - but they turned the mattress sideways, so all three of them could sleep on it. Roommate also loaned S a towel. </p>
<p>Apparently the storage company brought everything back to Juilliard the previous week. But S doesn't have a room at Juilliard, so he has no clue where his belongings are, and no one answers the phone, and the mailbox is full, and tomorrow is a holiday .... </p>
<p>So far, S went to BB&B and bought a folding chair. Roommate and mom went, too, and bought hundreds of dollars worth of furnishings. But S doesn't want much because he doesn't want to have to figure out what to do with it when he moves again. Doesn't even want cooking things - chunky soup and instant oatmeal in the microwave are enough. He has a mattress ordered from IKEA - to put on the floor. Thinks he'll get a small table for his computer. He doesn't think he needs anything else. He lives in practice rooms at the school anyway, during the day.</p>
<p>I guess the last six weeks we've all been living out of suitcases have affected him more than I thought.</p>
<p>My son (the one with the Boston move) also took very little personal "stuff" with him. However, he did have a full supply of kitchen "stuff" for the good of the apartment. When my mom died three years ago, I put HER kitchen stuff in boxes in my basement. Now it's all in Boston getting a second wind. Otherwise, my son (who actually likes to cook) would have gone with one frying pan and the microwave bowls. He, too, spends more time in the practice rooms than in his apartment!</p>
<p>I know someone who lives and Philly and regularly checks the piles of things left by the college students on move out day. I suppose she sells them at flea markets.</p>
<p>Excellent idea bhg - college dumpster diving!</p>
<p>I also have a part II, child #1 moving story. My daughter is college senior and this year she is spending her first quarter student teaching in St. Louis. For the first time she also needed a car at college and I got to drive with her and help her move in. I would have recruited her younger (but bigger) brother but she had the manual shift car and he never learned to drive it. We left on Sat. evening the 11th after I finished work and got to Pittsburgh quite late in the evening. Traffic was light. Stayed in a hotel. Left the next morning around 9 and got to Southwestern Illinois around dinner time. Traffic was again not bad but I can't believe that daughter actually does the drive in one shot with friends. Monday morning we got up bright and early and went to her college and picked up a carload of stuff from her trunk room. Her college is on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River and is beautiful. It was fun thinking the next time I visited it would be for graduation!</p>
<p>Her college has an 3 storage areas for the students. One is for computers, one is for all kinds of dorm stuff and one is for bikes. Daughter realized she had left her Target special bike outside before she went to Peru and it is now M.I.A. Anyway to shorten the story, I helped move her in to her furnished apartment and help sort her out a little. Stocked up on veggie food at Trader Joe's, Whole Food, Costco and Target! She got fingerprinted for a background check and had a couple of meetings. Tuesday she took me to the airport and Wednesday she reported to her new school - to teach!</p>
<p>BHG- She had a 5 week study abroad with her college. The way they do the study abroads is by major and then if there are extra spaces, they will review other applications and take them if they think it will be beneficial. This was a Spanish study abroad that included home-stays with people that spoke no English. My daughter is an ed major but is also double majoring in Sociology. She only had one year in Spanish her freshman year and took French in college and this was immersion Spanish, a pretty big challenge when all but she and one other student were majoring in Spanish. But she absolutely loved it and while she didn't become fluent she learned enough to understand what was being said and to get her ideas across to other people. Best part was the entire trip save $200 for the airfare (roundtrip STL to Lima via Miami) was included in her tuition and room and board. And now she wants to go to Africa during winter break with a friend of hers from Kenya!</p>