Three days from the time I’m writing this, I’ll be in a car starting the sixteen-hour-long drive to Fredonia, New York so I can begin my college education. The days leading up to my big transition have been one big task list. I have something to do every minute of every hour: boxes must be packed, emails must be written, deposits must be made, and goodbyes must be said. But despite all of this business, I feel kind of like I’m staring straight into the face of the void. I have a lot to do and a lot to keep me busy, but once I set foot on that campus, it’s my future. I call the shots. This is, of course, both scary and exciting.
The impending change and independence has caused me to reflect deeply on what’s happening all around me in my few days left in Tallahassee. I haven’t even left for college, but in preparing for it I’ve already learned some seemingly small, but very important, lessons.
- The difference between junk, stuff, and treasures.
Before I started packing for college, my closet, dresser, bookshelf, and desk were exploding with stuff. Obviously there was no way I was going to bring every single one of my possessions to college — after all, my boyfriend’s 2007 Toyota Corolla can only fit so many storage crates in the trunk — but I didn’t realize just how much junk I really had until I started the packing process.
Here are my findings: treasures are the things you love beyond everything else, even if they don't have a practical purpose. I treasure my French Bible and my cow stuffed animals. Stuff, on the other hand, is what you actually use on a daily or weekly basis. I would classify my favorite pair of Adidas shorts and my laptop as stuff. Junk is kind of self-explanatory: it's the three-year-old blouse in your closet that you haven’t worn yet because it looks atrocious on you, but you bought it because it was $5 at 80% off clearance. Oh yeah, you know exactly which shirt I'm talking about.
Through packing for college, I’ve found that my junk-stuff-treasure ratio is about 6:3:1. That’s great, because it means I don’t have to take everything I own to college, but also not great, because it means I own a lot of stuff I just don’t use or need.
Thus, I used my packing time as a decluttering time, too. I now have a huge garbage bag and a storage crate full of things I just don’t need. My room is cleaner, my boyfriend’s car won't be as tight of a squeeze, and my local thrift store can stock its shelves. Everyone wins!
2. A short email is a sweet email.
This seems silly, but I’ve had to send a lot of emails to my college this summer. I applied for a job through the student affairs email address; I had a back-and-forth email chain with the head of the foreign language department, the oboe professor, and the registrar; I had to clear some prerequisites in order to take some of my desired courses.
If I had to email a teacher in high school, I’d send longer, flowery emails because I thought it would help to fully explain whatever problem I was having. That just doesn’t work in college. Everyone is busier: administration and teachers have to deal with more students, faculty, and staff than a high school, so there are more emails coming in and going out. A flowery email just doesn’t work in that environment: it takes too long to read and too long to try and decipher the root of the problem.
Just in case you're still in high school and want to avoid my email-embarrassment, here are what I’ve learned this summer to be the three golden rules of professional emails:
- Be concise.
- Be polite.
- Tack on right at the end of the email, “If [my problem solution to this problem] doesn’t work, what would you suggest be my next step?” This shows that you’re flexible, as well as serious about getting your problem figured out. Easy as Grand Marché pie!
3. Everyone “adults” at a different pace.
They’ll tell you this over and over again your senior year of high school, but I didn’t really grasp it until I walked into my friend’s new apartment just a few days ago. That’s when it hit me: my friend already has an apartment, and I’m going to be living in a dorm this semester.
At first, I was jealous. Obviously there’s a bit more freedom, space, and privacy in an apartment than a dorm. But when I really thought about it, I remembered that I’m going to my first choice school, in my first choice state, with my best friend in the world. I'd consider myself pretty lucky, and I’m sure I’ll learn a ton from living with other people in a dorm.
I have friends who are living with their parents this year. I have friends taking a gap year. I have friends who are going to college in Europe. My friends are following their dreams, doing what they want to do, and that’s what really determines whether or not you’re successfully “adulting.” Regardless of whether we’re living in dorms, apartments, or our parents’ houses, regardless of whether we know how to cook or do laundry, regardless of whether we’re sure we’re majoring in the right thing, we are making decisions for ourselves, and that's what really marks out transitions into early adulthood. This is a priceless gem of truth that college has helped me to discover — and we’re still a week out from move-in day, so I can’t wait to see what the rest of my year holds.
