Today will be filled with a lot of tears. Tears of sadness from your mother’s eyes, and probably tears of joy from yours. Lots of sweaty upperclassman lugging your shit up an unfathomable number of flights of stairs, and your parents arguing so much that you wont be surprised when you find out the divorce followed shortly after. That’s right. Its move-in day. And here you are – standing outside of your dorm thinking one thing – why didn’t I pick affiliated?
There’s a universal thing about dorms – the stuffy smell, the puke-soaked rugs, the restrooms – they claim that someone comes around and cleans them every day, but there’s just something about 15-20 college men (and that term is used…very lightly) that no Brillo pad or Oxyclean can conquer. But you’ve already taken it all in from the outside, time to go inside. As you look through the dirty and rusted steel doors, you notice one thing: the giant, white cart being hurled at you at unimaginable speeds, commandeered by an irate parent arguing with their good-for-nothing, free loading, son of a bitch child. If you survive the cart altercation, I hope you are ready for leg day because lord knows that your sorry ass isn’t getting on the elevator. If you’re lucky, or patient enough, to wait for everyone and their extended family who cant go up stairs, you will soon find that elevators built in a building from 1972 haven’t seen a lick of maintenance since, well…1972. Once you lug up the cart the whole way, with the help of the upperclassman and your father's "dad strength," you now get to stock your room.
After calming down your mother about the trivial room size and the prison beds, you will then turn to closet space. Never mind, you have none. Time to pick your two favorite shirts and one sock for…Hey, why don’t we take a look at the view from the window? If you happen to have an air conditioner, you are now part of the top 1% that you hear financial advisors talking about on the news. Have you stepped foot in the bathroom yet? Well, go now, and go take a shower, because this is the only moment they will be clean. The second that it turns 12:01 AM on the new day, its over. The doors have been opened, and the bathroom is already so far gone that it is beyond the point of recognition or reconstruction. I hope you brought some shower sandals with you, and don’t think that the worst you will be getting is athlete’s foot. The fungus and the bacteria that come off of college kids feet onto those shower floors are of the category of organisms that have not even been recognized yet.
And now your RA is coming around to see how everything is going. Trust me, I know he looks like a square right now, but you will see come the first weekend that RA’s are people too. And if you get on the good side now, it’ll save your ass when you come off the elevator at 2 AM and run into the wall and then wake up on the couch. But, just as insane and hectic and abruptly the day started, it ends. Before you know it, move-in day is over. Taking your parents down back to the car, and the waterworks begin.
What no one realized that day was while you were standing there embarrassed, our families (mothers) were destroyed. They put all their energy into you, and you must remember that. It is so much harder for them to give you up than you will ever know. So hug them, call them, tell them you love them…wait are they gone? Welcome to college then. Time to scope out the co-ed floor. Look up, take it in, this is now your new home.
