There’s something deeply embarrassing about realizing, while packing up my room to move for the summer, that I might have a genuine addiction to Depop. Every drawer I open seems to produce another shirt I forgot I owned, another pair of shoes I convinced myself I needed because they belonged to some version of myself I was trying to become. For years, I’ve gone through phases of trying to be a minimalist — reorganizing my room, donating clothes, promising myself I’d stop accumulating so many things. But somehow I always return to the same instinct: Surrounding myself with physical objects because they make life feel fuller, more tangible and more well-lived.
Of course, that philosophy becomes a lot less romantic when it’s time to fit everything into boxes and drag it down two flights of stairs.
I’ve been packing slowly, almost reluctantly, this year. This is partly because there’s just too much stuff. Honestly, though, packing feels heavier than it used to. When I come back in the fall, I will be a senior, and everything will begin to happen for the last time. Last first day of the school year. Last first homecoming. Last fall on campus before winter turns everything gray again. I can already feel myself resisting the quiet march toward all those lasts, as if avoiding the boxes somehow keeps time from moving forward.
But this year has made one thing impossible to ignore: Time moves whether I’m paying attention or not. Entire months disappear before I’ve fully registered them. Moments I was sure had just happened are already becoming memories, flattened at the edges by distance and repetition. Life is accelerating without asking permission.
This week in Mirror, we tie up loose ends. Our relationship columnist explores keeping relationships casual. The Dartmouth’s graduating seniors say goodbye to the newsroom.
I’m packing anyway. Slowly, begrudgingly, but still packing. As I do, I keep finding small reminders of the life I’ve built here over the last three years: receipts from meals with friends shoved into jacket pockets, wristbands and bits of flair from nights out, random objects that would look meaningless to anyone else. I think that’s why I keep accumulating things in the first place. They become proof that these moments actually happened.
For now, at least, I still have another year before these boxes are packed up for good.
Aditi Gupta ’27 is a Mirror editor from Ridgefield, Conn. She is majoring in Biology with minors in Global Health and English. On campus, she spends most of her time working in a cell biology lab. She hopes to pursue a career that integrates her love for scientific research with her broader academic interests in health and literature.
