Dorm sized fridge… AND a seperate freezer for ice…?
( There are no ice machines in dorms… and only you know just how your kids DECIMATE the supply of ice-cubes in your kitchen freezer in hot weather…)
Also possibly a coffee maker with lots of filters and 2-3 COSTCO sized containers of ground coffee.
Look back in the day… some of the kids used to like coffee.
Some of us even found wives that way.
He talked to the 2 people who will be his roommates. They can rent a fridge and microwave from the college, so they are doing that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my son drink coffee though.
So a college sees orientation as a chance to separate you from your kid - and they do it pretty effectively. As in (one possible scenario), one moment you are all in an auditorium together, and the next they are leaving the auditorium with their orientation group, where they will be scheduled moment by moment and you are told “go home.”
So my advice is to look over the orientation schedule and figure out when you will be taking them out for their last nice meal for a bit (probably the day before orientation starts, but maybe move in day), and when your kid gets the student orientation schedule and you are told to go home. Just so it doesn’t come as a complete shock that you are driving home without a goodbye.
I assume that you’ve already worked out the basic logistics of registering for classes and figured out how he’s going to buy textbooks and pay tuition and lab fees. Here’s some other concerns that come to mind.
What’s the laundry situation? Does he need quarters for the machines, or does he use some sort of credit card account? Does he have detergent?
What’s the food situation? Does he have a food plan and, if so, where’s the cafeteria? Is he going to buy some groceries - how’s he getting to the store? Could he use some useful appliances, like a toaster oven?
What’s the dating situation? Does he need condoms? Where’s the student Union, where he can learn about all the on campus clubs?
What’s the weather situation? I went to school in Florida, so a fan was a nice thing to have. I’m guessing he won’t have that issue, but is there something that might otherwise help make the dorm more cozy, like a space heater?
What’s the cash situation? Are you giving him any sort of allowance, or does he need to look for work? How’s he going to come up with the cash to throw in on a pizza with the guys on a Friday night?
I’d be careful about an appliance like a toaster oven; some schools prohibit anything with a heating element in dorm rooms. Check the paperwork they send you.
And renting the dorm fridge might make sense. It was a bulky thing that was a pain to transport to school and then back home at year end. I think some schools now just supply them as part of the room furniture, which makes a lot of sense.
I went to school thirty-something years ago, and things are very different today but I hope your kid is careful to make sure that all of his work is backed up, or just kept on a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox, just in case his laptop goes missing.
And I hope your son keeps up with the schoolwork. There are lots of distractions at college (we used to say that if not for the classes, it could be the most fun you’d have in four years), and I knew several people who neglected schoolwork because they got too involved with a club or drinking/drugs or a fraternity.
This is the most important thing.
Take lots of pictures~you’ll enjoy looking at them in the years to come.
This is the best advice. No one knows what they need until they get there. When my younger daughter went to Maryland, Ikea nearby had reserved evenings where they bussed the students in to buy stuff. Not furniture, more like sheets and tableware.
My other daughter, who move into her dorm 22 years ago, just told me the best thing we did was not get emotional. She went to Chicago, which has it planned. The new students get separated, and the parents and students are ushered into different parts of the cathedral to get a welcome speech. Then we went off to the hotel. Getting one is another good piece of advice from this thread.
My youngest’s college won’t allow anything with a heating element in the dorm rooms - no Keurigs, no electric kettles. Technically, electric blankets aren’t allowed. You can use them in the kitchens if you bring one (the kitchen stuff - it would be strange to use your electric blanket in the kitchen). The stated reason is fire safety. Also, if you want a microwave you need to rent the micro/fridge combo (you can bring your own fridge). The reason for this is that the micro fridge combo cuts power to the fridge when the microwave runs - otherwise they’d overload the circuits. Dorms were often built in the era where you were going to plug in a study lamp - and aren’t necessarily wired for fridge/microwave/kettle/hair dryer/laptop/printer/phone charger/Xbox/ etc. electrical load of the contemporary college student.
This is from the UK, so I don’t know how well it will translate to a US context. Also, the specific question I’m answering is, “anything I should know about how I’ll feel”. (And I’m also assuming you went to college yourself.)
We dropped Trep Jr off in a hall of residence - I assume you’re doing something similar. When we arrived it was extraordinary how intensely this brought back memories of being in halls of residence myself, all those years ago. I was genuinely taken aback.
There was a deeply disconcerting moment when I passed another father hefting suitcases up some stairs or along a corridor, and I was aware of myself thinking something like “look at that fat old bald guy, wheezing away”; and simultaneously aware that he was probably thinking exactly the same about me. We all got old.
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In some ways it’s better. A couple of decades ago you might have brought a desktop computer with a 300W power supply, CRT monitor and so forth. Now it’s a notebook computer using much less power.
You child must not be as big a gamer as mine. His PC and monitors(!) were bigger than the ones I had.
A lot of the older dorms weren’t built for THAT either. But, yep. I once worked for a Fortune 100 corporation that put a moratorium on printer purchases because the building electrical couldn’t handle it - this would have been about 1995. They centralized them to a few per floor, and VPs.
I don’t know if this is of any use to say, but I hope your kid doesn’t go wild, off the leash, and drink him/her self into a coma. Whether socializing or through hazing, it breaks my heart to read about young people just starting their first year, and dying from alcohol poisoning or road accidents, or falling down outside and dying alone, from exposure. … My babby’s first year in the dorm, she was 17 and not allowed to drink. Her roommates, however, were old enough to drink, and drink they did, a mile or two in bars in town. A couple of times, her friends called my daughter in the middle of the night to walk into town, alone, even in winter, to drive them back to the dorm in their own cars! She dutifully did this until I found out and hit the f’ing roof and made her promise on my own not-yet-dug-grave to stop it.
I was the 17 year old sober one who got the girl who swallowed the quarter over to the hospital.
Most kids don’t drink to the point of poisoning themselves. And, in my opinion, some amount of drinking, sex, weed smoking, and generally irresponsible behavior (responsibly irresponsible) is part of college. Otherwise, don’t send them away.
My advice is not to worry about it, because if you are that worried about it, sending your kid off to college is probably a mistake. You need to trust your kid or you will drive both of you crazy.
Oh, I agree, of course doing that kind of stuff is all part of the college experience, and parental worry is useless. I know a family whose kid left for college dorm life, and the mother refused to cut the umbilical cord - via cell phone. Helicopter Tiger Mom. I was there when she called the poor girl up (as she did every night) demanding to know where she went, was she studying, who her friends were/what were they like/ where they came from, and she better not be boozing or whoring around because they weren’t paying for her to do that. I felt bad for the girl. I think I would have STARTED drinking heavily if I were her!..So don’t be that parent, calling wanting to stick your nose into your kid’s business, every single night.
With a girl, probably. In the next several weeks no less.
My dorm was weirdly proud of the fact that one of the residents was in the local hospital for alcohol poisoning even before classes started. We were seventeen or eighteen and this was about the time that the drinking age was raised to 21, so none of us could legally drink. Despite that, alcohol was freely available, at the frat parties if nowhere else. Some kids really don’t handle the freedom of being at college well at all and go overboard with the drinking or whatever.
Thanks everyone for the posts. To clear up some stuff, no I’m not a “helicopter parent” or anything like that. Just hoping I’ve set him up for success in his life, because we only get one chance 
I didn’t go to traditional college, I joined the Air Force right out of High School, so I don’t have any first-hand knowledge of the college experience, only what I see on TV and the movies, which are both 100% true.
Most of the minutia (like laundry and the like) I don’t have time to figure out, and I’m sure him and his 2 roommates can figure out.
My main reason for asking is anything I wouldn’t think of since I didn’t go to college and he’s the first going, just looking for any “make SURE he does this” and etcetera. I really appreciate everyone’s responses!
Don’t worry about laundry and the like. The great thing about college is that all freshmen are in the same boat, and the dorm will have orientation about where the laundry is, how bed linen works, etc.
One thing you might think about now is how long is he allowed to stay in campus housing. Lots of public colleges kick kids out after a year or two to save on dorm space, private ones let you stay all four years. If it is a short interval he should start familiarizing himself with available apartments and maybe collect roommates. Or do like my daughter did, become an RA and be allowed to stay in the dorms all four years.
Good advice.