Freshman Year of College: Lessons From the Trash Heap
If helping my daughter move into her freshman dorm last fall was like the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy lands among the adorable munchkins, pretty flowers, and lovely Glenda the Good Witch, helping her move out was like being trapped in the forest with the Wicked Witch’s scary monkeys. The move in was full of anticipation, excitement, new packages of cute bedding and desk supplies. The move out was a scramble of ‘summer is here, finals are over, grab Toto and get me out of here.’
When parents buy so much ‘just in case,’ and students have to move every single item out of their dorm rooms and apartments, guess what happens?
Trash.
Lots and lots of trash.
My daughter’s university instructed students that they had twenty-four hours after their last final to move out of their dorm, which spread the move outs across four to five days. My daughter, due to a late exam schedule, ended up on the last of the move out days. I arrived early to help and so had the chance to witness, on a daily basis, huge amounts of trash in the parking lot trash area, every day for four days. In the morning the many bins would be empty, by nightfall they would overflow. The next morning, empty again, only to overflow again by night. Every day.
It reminded me how much we over accumulate, only to throw it out as we rush on to the next thing.
My daughter was impatient with me, exhausted by studying for finals, disinterested in what happened to 80% of the stuff in her room. And in dorms, it all has to go. Every last hook and towel.
We stuffed bags and piles in the car, recycled all the Hint empties, threw out trash like everyone else. Staring at the dumpsters, seeing the fans and shoe shelves and discarded mattress toppers I was disturbed by the waste.
Until I saw an older man with a pickup truck pull up beside the pile and start going through it. I went over and chatted with him. He goes through it all, takes out the stuff still usable, and sells it at flea markets. It made me so happy, that at least some of the stuff won’t go to waste, that a man willing to go through trash can make some money off of it. It seemed a good solution all around.
I did see a notice that some of the dorms were collecting the extras and donating them somewhere, good for them. But I also saw in the exit frenzy that people got to the point that they just wanted to be done so they tossed everything that didn’t fit in the car or truck and peeled rubber out of there.
Of course it is important to be able to move on.
Of course it is useful to clean out stuff you don’t need anymore.
But the contrast between the move in, full of building something new, and the move out, full of throwing things away, hit me.
The move in was so emotional for me. Looking back at it I see that it felt like a final panicked rush to provide everything she might ever need. A pressured feeling that my parenting time clock was almost up and I better stuff everything she might ever need into those bags right now.
I realize that at move in she was focused on the mountain she was about to climb, I was focused on building her base camp. And I over-furnished it.
Looking at the piles of trash, I know I wasn’t the only one.
Maybe what was getting thrown out was all the stuff parents thought their students needed. Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe that is what college is about anyway. A daughter figuring out on her own what she herself needs and doesn’t need.
Like every other aspect of sending your child to college it was costly, but wow, lesson learned.
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