Moving out is hard to do.
It tops my list of college annoyances -- worse than dorm bathrooms closed for cleaning at 10 a.m., worse than parking meters that last five minutes less than the average class and worse than trudging to Cooper Science through the snow just as the sun peeks over the horizon.
The first moving challenge is finding time to pack everything in your room during the middle of finals week. Student are bound to discover, once they glance around their cinder block cubicle with a critical eye, that they have a lot more "stuff" than they previously suspected.
Some of the excessive "stuff" is understandable: old books that TIS wouldn't take, stacks of syllabi and handouts that had been growing for two semesters and more zip disks than one human being could ever need.
But I have found some "stuff" that boggles the mind; I'm sure I'm not the only one. I found a pair of shoes that couldn't have fit me since junior high. I found illegible notes, dried pens, and broken highlighters. I found backpacks that didn't belong to me -- even small appliances abandoned by their owners.
Eventually, you manage to cram the "stuff"--both excessive and not-- into one or more vehicles. You say your goodbyes to friends about to scatter across the country.
Then, if you're lucky, you pass out for a week, trying to recover from the semester. When you finally awaken, confused and disoriented, you stumble out to your parents. Now the second challenge of moving begins.
"Hey guys," you say, still mentally drowsy. "What's with all these boxes?"
It's a hard to squeeze the "stuff" that fit so perfectly in your dorm room into your former bedroom-- now a parent's office or the den-- and a closet conquered by a sibling.
And there's just no good place in an average home for an extra refrigerator, an extra television and an extra fluorescent beer sign.
Unpacking the small stuff is even worse than stashing the big stuff. I have yet to master the art of packing with a plan. My strategy amounts to opening a box and filling it with everything in arm's reach. This makes any attempt to unpack and organize a Herculean task, even if it also adds a tinge of excitement and surprise to opening each box.
Moving will never get easier; even students fortunate enough to live off campus can't possibly enjoy it. If nothing else, they have a lot more furniture to carry.
But I think we can make moving a little less frustrating, at least during the dorm years. My advice is this: never unpack. Just don't do it.
Summer is good time for road trips, for visiting friends that used to live across the hall but now live in places you would otherwise never see. So instead of going through all the trouble of packing an overnight bag for each of these adventures, just grab one of the boxes from the dorm and walk out the door.
Chances are, you'll find whatever you might need for the trip in that packed box.
My plan has one more benefit. When August comes, the boxes are already packed. This way, there's no chance of accidentally leaving behind those shoes from junior high or that dried out highlighter. Never know when those will come in handy.
Write to Stephen at stevehj@mac.com
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