It’s that time of year, you’re packing up and moving out. You have to pack up eight months of memories and free t-shirts courtesy of your lovely neighborhood Housing and Food department. It can be a bittersweet moment because as much as you are excited to move on from the drags of dorm living, you can’t help but miss the tiny square box you’ve been inhabiting. As you break out the boxes you begin to notice that all of those things you thought you lost didn’t end up in a black hole…
1. Misplaced and Forgotten
You started the year with your favorite pair of headphones and not two days into living in the dorms did you realize you’ve lost them. At first you thought you may have left them in the cafeteria or the gym, then you formulate a whole story about how your roommate stole them. Who do they think they are? Mid-May rolls around and you check the crevasse behind your bed and look what’s laying there collecting dust. Yep, your sacred headphones. (Make sure to apologize to your roommate)
2. Rogue Sock
Despite what your mother thinks, you did do all of your own laundry this year. Yes, all on your own. Sometimes the laundry room can turn white t-shirts into your new favorite pastel shirt and on the occasion you lose a sock or two. So you’ve had an uneven number of socks this entire year. Wait, update you didn’t lose your sock it just happened to make its way into the back corner of your closet. Now who put that there?
3. Aged Gum
Just as your coffee addiction has been worsened in college, so has your gum addiction. You have packs scattered around your room and every single one of them is empty. For a gum fiend you never seem to have enough and always seem to be bumming off of your roomie. Well, moving out can be stressful and what is better at relieving your stress than a nice minty piece of gummy goodness. As per usual, you seem to be out. You grab your backpack and spend a ridiculous amount of time looking for a fresh piece. To your surprise you find something resembling gum but it’s a bit squished and extremely stale… Oh well.
4. Borrowed?
Going through your clothes can be one of the most painful tasks when moving out. You go through and fold every piece and try to remember what you bought this year and what you came with to help you figure out if you lost anything. But then you stumble upon a strange flannel that definitely was not there when you moved in. You question if this was a forgotten purchase or something you borrowed that you forgot to return. Either way, you haven’t a clue who it belongs to so you claim it anyways.
5. Blame It On Me
There should be an award for the number of times you went out and returned home and successfully put yourself to bed. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean everything made it home safely (clothing wise). You go to get ready one morning and realize you can’t find your favorite necklace. You mourn your loss for five minutes and rant to your roommate, then you give up the battle and move on. Well, in the pocket of that one sweater you only wore once you find your beloved necklace. *immediate freak out*
6. Late Policy
All college professors should implement a “my dorm room is a black hole” option when turning in assignments because while cleaning out your desk you find three government assignments, an Italian paper and your calculus review. You swear you checked every inch of that room and your backpack, but there they are ready to be turned into someone who actually cares about them. Somehow you still managed to pass all of your classes, even if your room is a giant trash can.
7. Never Used
As a freshman, you tend to over-prepare for everything. You’ve got enough underwear and toothpaste to survive the apocalypse. Somehow you still end up needing everything out of the care packages your family sends you every so often. However, at the end of the year you discover that giant white board you bought or the extra pictures you printed but never put up. You would give them to Goodwill, but you’re not quite sure if anyone wants to frame a picture of you and your four cats and hang it up on their wall.
8. Freezer Burn
Your refrigerator was a life saver this year. For all of those times you brought home leftovers so you could stretch one meal over three meals, it was a lifesaver. And that one time you had a near mental breakdown and decided to buy yourself a big tub of Death By Chocolate ice cream, what would you have done without your freezer? Well that was 3 months ago and you realize that after getting over your temporary freak out you no longer needed that much ice cream, so it's freezer burned in the back of your freezer. *prompts another mental break down, requiring purchase of new ice cream*
9. It’s Not About The Price Tag
What is the definition of Instagram worthy? Well to the average college girl, Instagram worthy means dressing to the theme of whatever party you’re going to and taking selfies until you get the proper lighting and angle. This requires a new shirt for every occasion and all of the cheesy Mardi Gras beads you can find at Party City. You tear the price tags off and throw them wherever you can before going out. Now you’re left to clean them all up, but you don’t really mind because as you go through them you reminisce all of the good times, late nights and the money you don’t have.
10. Excessive Much
Seven tubes of mascara, five sticks of deodorant and an entire drawer of Bath and Body Works lotions later, you realize you have a problem. Options, options, options, girls love options. So even though we tend to have way too many clothes, shoes and perfumes, we use them all. Compiling all of your excess belongings at the end of the year you realize you have two and sometimes even three of each. At least you will always smell fresh and fruity and have extra-long, black lashes.
11. Paint Me Confused
The first month of school was designed to get you and all of your friends involved. From offering free pizza to paint parties you were doing (eating) it all and you have all of the souvenirs to prove it. Underneath your bed, hidden behind your box of snacks, you have stored some of those souvenirs. The t-shirt you wore to the paint party is stained with neon paints and has pretty much fossilized from being untouched for months. (So maybe you didn’t do ALL of your laundry.)
12. Big Spender
Over the course of the past eight months, you realize the true meaning of broke college student. When you aren’t buying themed clothing, you’re going out to eat on a Wednesday night and paying Uber fare. So when you got a care package you checked the box a million times to see if anyone snuck you ten or twenty. At the end of the year when you find an unopened card with your name on it, you think nothing of it. You open it and you realize you hit the jackpot. You’ve discovered $100 that will buy you all of the tacos your heart desires. Shout out to you grandma, you’re the real MVP.
13. Lemon Scented
When you were younger your mom wouldn’t let you do anything until your room was cleaned and all of your chores were finished, but this is college so you have no chores. So at the end of the year when you find a stash of lemon scented Clorox wipes and Windex you cringe. You realized that you’ve only cleaned your room and bathroom a handful of times, usually when you knew your parents were in town. You swear you aren’t that disgusting, you’re just a busy college student. Oops.
14. Oh Right, That
Coming in you promised yourself you would never become the person that has a pizza box under their bed and to your defense you didn’t. But you can’t say the same for the dishes you used. Your to-go coffee mug hasn’t been cleaned in ages and you’re not really concerned about cleaning it ever. Oh wait, scratch that you probably should just put that straight down the trash shoot. Other than the coffee mug and occasional dish or two, you did pretty well. Congratulations you’ve survived your first year of college and you still have most of your socks and some of your sanity!
