Taking My Daughter to College, Part 1

August 29th, 2008

I just got back from taking my daughter Kat to college. She’s been home with me for the last two years, since she dropped out of Texas Christian University (TCU) after her dad died. If she hadn’t dropped out, she would have graduated last May, when my son Chris did. (It took him 7 years to graduate because he took small course loads or skipped semesters completely to help me with his dad while Hugh was ill.) While Kat was at home, she did take some classes at Houston Community College, and she also worked a year in a Christian bookstore. When she decided it was time to get back out on her own, she wanted to start fresh at a new college, so she chose a state school in a small town.
Kat and I drove up in separate cars this past weekend, so she could have her car with her and I could help bring her stuff and get her settled in. Kat is living in a ten-story dorm linked to another ten-story dorm by a lobby. In other words, a lot of kids live in these two mammoth towers. Luckily, many of them had already moved in, since the dorm had been open for a couple of days. Unluckily, many of them were moving in at the same time Kat was. It was kinda crazy.
For those of you who are lucky enough to have missed the experience of Texas in August, I will just tell you that, because of the heat and the humidity, the newspaper said that it felt like between 101F – 103F all weekend. In addition, the humidity made it feel as if I was in a large kettle of soup. Yuck! I’m somewhat used to it, since I’m from Houston, but moving a kid into a college dorm when thousands of other parents are moving thousands of other kids into the same college dorm makes it extra sweaty. That’s the only word for it. I thought about using a more genteel word, but “sweaty” is the one of the words that sums up my weekend. The other word is “exhausting.”
In addition to the weather, the AC was not working in my motel room when we checked in about 9 p.m. on Friday night. The motel was booked solid, as was every other motel in town. It took about an hour before it got fixed, because we were so brain-dead tired that we didn’t even call the front desk for about 30 minutes. We just kept thinking it would get cooler, but it didn’t. The people were very nice and fixed it quickly and even gave us a large fan in addition. I think they were worried I would have a heart attack or something. I get very red in the face when I’m hot, and after a day of packing Kat up and driving 3 hours, I was tired. It was not a pretty sight. Thankfully, the AC worked fine after that.
Saturday we spent getting her moved in, which included multiple trips to and from both cars. Luckily the dorm was renting out carts to help with the loads. It cost $10 - $12/ hr for the carts. I would have paid twice that. Some of the carts were clearly marked “WalMart.” At that point, I didn’t care that someone was making money off of stolen carts. They were probably going to take them back to WalMart after everyone moved in.
The best part of the whole time was the free, cold water that volunteers were distributing. They probably saved lives by doing that. I’m not kidding. Boomer parents, myself included, aren’t all in the best shape. I’d recommend that public service to all alums who live in their college towns. It was the best public relations I’ve ever seen.
Kat’s dorm room is minuscule. The two dorm towers are round. They look very cool from the outside, but because the towers are round, the rooms are shaped like a slice of pie with the tip cut off. Dorm rooms are usually smaller than kids expect, but when they are pie-shaped, they are even smaller than most small dorm rooms. Her roommate had already bunked the beds, which helped, but some closets are bigger than Kat’s room. Well, that might be an exaggeration, but not by much. You can see from the photos at the top of this blog that there isn't much room, especially for two people. Good thing Kat isn’t claustrophobic.
I’ll write about the rest of the trip next time. I’d love to hear from any of you about your trip to take a child to college. Come on, share. It’s such a fun trip. :P
Blessings,

Bonnie