Taking My Daughter to College, Part 2

This is the second half of my report on my trip. See Part 1 below.

A computer has become an essential tool for college. However, like all computers, sometimes computers at college don't function like they are supposed to, and most of the time you have to get plugged into the college internet service. At times that's as easy as plugging it in. In my experience, most of the time It's not that easy. My daughter and I had to go to the technical support building three times. The first time we went they said we had to go back and get Kat’s laptop. (We just wanted a network cord, which they were distributing free of charge.) We went back to her room and returned with her laptop. Then they told us that they were out of the network cords. So they set her laptop up for wireless. After they did this, they told us that her dorm didn’t get wireless. Even after we’d bought a network cord, Kat still couldn’t get the internet. So we went to tech support again. One of the support people from the day before had left his IP number on her computer, so it wouldn’t work in her dorm room. Although the support team was set up outside, (more sweating), they did give us free cold drinks and hot dogs. That was lunch on Saturday.

Sometime between the second and third trip to technical support, we went to buy Kat’s books. Kat's last college only has one bookstore where you can purchase textbooks, but there are four in this college town, two of them right next door to each other. When we went to the first one, they didn’t have any used books for Kat’s courses. Used books can save you a fortune, so Kat stayed at the first bookstore with her textbooks while I went next door to see if they had any used books for her courses. In both bookstores, people came right up to us and helped us find the books. In the second store, Jay, the man in charge, came up to me. I explained that Kat was next door with her books, and that I had come looking for used textbooks. He promptly told me that even if they didn’t have used copies that their prices were lower. We found 4 or 5 used ones and a new one that was 95 cents lower than at the other bookstore. They were missing two of the books, which we had found at the other store. I told Jay I would go get Kat and we would purchase the books he had. While we were purchasing Kat's books at Jay's bookstore, he gave Kat a free notebook and both of us free soft drinks. Competition is a wonderful thing when you are the buyer.

An essential part of every trip to take your kid to college is the marathon WalMart trip. This takes hours, especially if it’s the weekend before the local schools begin, as it was last weekend. It makes sense not to pack all the laundry soap and school supplies, but it does make for a very long shopping trip. And we didn’t start this marathon shopping expedition until about 9 p.m. We’d heard that WalMart was out of the network cords, so we also stopped at Staples before we even went to WalMart. Both of our feet were aching before the first hour was up.

When we got back to the dorm at 11 p.m., they weren’t renting the WalMart carts anymore, so we had to carry most of it up to the dorm room. We did use Kat’s rolling laundry hamper for one trip, and that helped. I recommend that you take a dolly or even just a collapsible luggage cart with you, in case your school doesn’t rent out WalMart carts. Kat wanted me to stay and help her put everything away, but I was totally exhausted and probably somewhat dehydrated, despite the free water and soft drinks. I begged off and went back to my motel room.

I intended to leave after church on Sunday, but Kat wanted me to stay longer. How could I refuse? I knew I was going back to an empty house, (not counting my two dogs), so staying with my daughter for a little while longer wasn’t a tough sell. I told her I just wanted to get home by dark, which, these days in Houston, is a little after 8 p.m. It’s a three hour drive without stops. I left at 4:30 p.m. I stopped once at a truck stop, where I bought a “The Best of Linda Ronstadt” CD. I sang loudly, if not well, the rest of the way home. When I turned into my driveway it was almost 8 p.m. I was happy to be home and my dogs were ecstatic to see me, but I now have a very empty nest. It seems like only yesterday that there were four people living in my house.

If any of you would like to share your stories about taking a child to college or your empty nest, please post a comment. It helps to know you're not alone in this situation.

Blessings,

Bonnie

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