Over the course of 15 months (from September 2010 to January 2012), I will have moved six times: from home to Mid Fayerweather, then to D.C. for an off-term, back to Mid Fay for 11S, out of Mid Fay to an off-campus house for 11X, out of that house to London for 11F, then back to Dartmouth for 12W, where I will finally be able to (sigh) not move until the end of 12S.
When I move, I make lists lists of things to pack, things to wrap up and usually a bucket list of things I want to do before I leave wherever I've been living for the past 10 weeks. In the spirit of moving, I have compiled a list of behavioral changes that can and often do occur as a result of a Dartmouth life in transit.1. Belonging Detachment
When you move as frequently as the average Dartmouth student, you begin to think of and treat your belongings like many Dartmouth students think about their hookups. Yeah that shirt was useful, you enjoyed it, but at the end of the day you won't be too upset if you happen to leave it in Barcelona. When you're moving around as frequently as most of us are, belongings start to slip out of suitcases, get left under beds or dropped in toilets, and after the first couple times you begin to stop caring and just let things go. There are other shirts out there after all. It's very liberating.
- Decrease in Living Standards
Moving is a lot of work. How much you care about doing a good job moving in or out is inversely proportional to the number of times that you move. This term, my stuff was still in boxes piled on my desk chair until the end of the first week. Who really needs sheets on her bed? You will also lose the motivation to make the room aesthetically pleasing (putting up posters eats up valuable Angry Birds time) and you'll probably never make that Wal-Mart trip to get the ever-crucial "Rest of The Stuff You Need." You may never have another towel to call your own for the rest of your college career. It's fine. Or, you might as well kill two pigs with one bird and get your roommate to drive you to Wal-Mart while you sit shotgun playing Angry Birds.
- Appreciation for Permanent Home Structures
When you are moving around as a college student, you're usually moving from a tiny, crappy dorm room to a tiny, crappy apartment and back again. So when you go home for vacation or visit someone else's home or apartment where they have actually been living for more than two and a half months, you will gaze with wonder at what surrounds you. They have so much stuff! There are separate rooms for sleeping and eating! What a big bed! You finally appreciate the space in which you lived the first 18 years of your life, even though you couldn't wait to leave at the time.
- Adoption of Dartmouth as Temporary Home Base
With all this moving, you probably haven't spent much time at your own homem say, 12 hours in the last four months. But wherever you are roaming on this girdled earth, you know that the one place to which you will be returning is Dartmouth. (For four years, at least.) It's where your friends are, where the fresh-baked Pavillion cookies are (yeah Mom, maybe you should bake a fresh batch of cookies every 10 minutes next time I come home), where pong involves paddles and isn't Hanover just the cutest!? Dartmouth becomes a constant ("constant" being defined as something that lasts for longer than 10 weeks). This college is what you know and where you feel most comfortable.
As for moving advice well, I don't really have any, except that the fastest and easiest way to move out is to just shove all your belongings into garbage bags.
