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The 10 Stages of Packing up Your Dorm

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Brandeis chapter.

Procrastination

Knowing you have to pack, but telling yourself that you’re just far to busy to do it today. You’ll have more time later…right?

 

Planning

This is really just part two of procrastinating. You’re wondering how you’ll pack up your massive amount of stuff, without actually doing anything at all.

Realizing What’s Ahead of You… and Panicking

This is the part where you try to start packing, and suddenly understand how horrendous this process is about to be. You are suddenly regretting purchasing every item you own and curse the consumerist society we live in. Why the heck do you have three different dish brushes anyway?

 

Panicking Some More

Welcome to phase three of procrastinating. In feeling so overwhelmed by the task ahead, ya just freak out and don’t do anything at all. You know you’re just making it worse and are actively choosing to make a poor decision. Yikes.

 

Acceptance

You’ve come to your senses and are ready to get packing. Music is blasting and you will not rest until all of your crap is organized and labeled in boxes. Let great packing fest of 2018 begin!

 

Making a Mess

Packing is literally supposed to be cleaning and removing all of your mess, why does that always end up meaning throwing everything you own on the floor?

 

Cleaning it Up

Time to throw things into piles and make sense of the chaos you’ve created.

 

Shoving

The dream of organized, labeled boxes has been thrown out the window. At this point, you’re just shoving things into other things to get them away from you. This will bug the heck out of you in August when you are forced to make sense of the bizarre box of utensils, scarves, and pillowcases you’ve stuffed into the box labeled “winter coats” but that’s a problem for later. This is about efficiency, not effectiveness.

 

Stuffing it into the Car

The last phase is often the most frustrating. Finding a way to make everything fit into the car feels like an impossible game of Tetris. Once you’ve got it all in the car, you just have to hope and pray you’ll actually be able to get the trunk to close.

 

Leaving

BYE SCHOOL! The second you’re off campus for the summer, you forget everything and will inevitably do this all again next year. Happy summer everybody!​ (All PC: https://giphy.com)

Emily Rae Foreman is a senior at Brandeis University studying Internationals and Global (IGS) studies with a double minor in Economics and Anthropology. She has been acting President of Her Campus Brandeis for two years, as well as a tour guide, an Undergraduate Department Representative for IGS, A writer for the Brandeis Politics Journal and Vice President of the Brandeis Society for International Affairs.