Welcome to Move-In Weekend at the Univer-sity, home to more mini-vans than a Chrysler dealership and enough 15-minute parking to accommodate half of them.
Times like this often are filled with more questions than answers, making Move-In Weekend one of life's great mysteries. Let's begin with the Ethernet cord. If you're moving into first-year dorms, it's a must. You know it's a must because they give you enough of it to circle the globe 7.5 times. It takes approximately that long to coil up the tangled blue mess and plug it into your computer. This is assuming, of course, that your dad has not taken the cord and rigged it up outside your window as a pulley system for all the stuff you brought from home. After a dozen trips up and down the dormitory stairs, Daddy Dearest may not be very sympathetic to the fact that you had to bring 97 pairs of shoes to wear during your first year at the University.
It's fair to say at this point that he has reached the end of his cord, er, rope.
From my recently acquired lofty third-year perch, I look back on my Move-In Weekend with the satisfied smile of nostalgia. Luckily, my roommate was a foreign student so she was allowed to move into the dorm nearly 24 hours before other students. This gave me ample time to move my stuff in as well, having flown to Charlottesville early and convinced my parents to drive by Old Dorms the night we arrived. When I saw the lights on in my future room, we decided it was time for a covert mission.
We loaded up our rented Rodeo SUV with every stuffed animal, T-shirt and pillowcase I have ever owned and started countless trips up the back stairs.
Of course, my belongings included a Yaffa Block tower high enough to rival Le Tour Eiffel, which I had decided to assemble in the parking lot "just to see that it worked." I refused to take it apart after all my hard work, so we carried it up the stairs like that. Move-In Weekend has a way of making people very stubborn.
The key to this weekend, however, is not untangling your Ethernet cord or making stealthy midnight runs to your dorm room before everyone arrives. The key to moving into the dorms is a fan. Did I say a fan? I meant two. Or three. Per person.
Unless you are lucky enough to live in an air-conditioned dorm (and, if you value your life, I would not share this information with other students as they struggle to unpack their boxes in the 95-degree heat), a fan is the first order of business. It's not a bad idea to have several going at once, aimed directly at each person attempting to unpack your 97 pairs of shoes and enough clothes to last not only your first year but the other three years as well.
I remember looking at the tiny closet where my roommate already had hung her clothes, then glancing down at my own wardrobe still in duffle bags and shooting a fierce look at my parents to ask, "And where's my closet?"
At which point my dad informed me that I was looking at my closet, which coincidently was also my roommate's closet and the size of a mouse hole. But look, he said, what nice fans we have for your room.
By this time, there were so many fans going we'd used up every electrical outlet in the room. It was looking bleak for my computer and printer cords. I decided it would be possible to get through the next two months of my first year without a computer because the fans definitely were taking precedence.
If it had been possible to plug in a fan to the phone jacks, we would have tried that too. The Ethernet cord made a better pulley than a wire anyway.
Move-In Weekend is the last real bonding experience (a nice little euphemism) you'll have with your parents until Move-Out Weekend in May. And when it's done, they go home and you are officially in college. I remember once the last Yaffa block was snapped into place and the last pair of shoes settled snuggly on the closet floor, it was time to say goodbye.
I watched my parents crawl back into the Rodeo, which no longer was leaning precariously to one side under the weight of all my belongings, and wave goodbye as they drove through the maze of mini-vans on McCormick Road.
For the first time I was on my own, left to my own devices and the steady hum coming from a symphony of whirling fans.
Move-In Weekend can be rather anti-climatic -- you go non-stop for hours and then screech to a dead halt.
My parents were gone, the boxes unpacked and the BBQ downstairs wouldn't start for another two hours. I didn't know a single person in my building, let alone the entire Old Dorms. I watched a steady stream of families come through the courtyard, accompanied by cheerful Greeters in their blue shirts.
I couldn't believe the number of students moving in, and I wondered what would happen in the event there was ever a fire in the dorms.
Then I remembered that we each had an Ethernet cord long enough for everyone on the hall to slide out the window to safety.
Those ITC people think of everything.
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