<p>My second daughter leaves in 4 weeks. She is going to same NYC college as her sister. Its coming very fast. We are from northern california.</p>
<p>As for the roommate getting his own fridge and not “sharing”- there could be many reasons for that-special diet, beer storage, mom sending him with lots of food, jock, weird hours for work. a parent who is saying he shouldn’t share, a brat, medication, etc</p>
<p>Don[t read too much into the not want to share fridge, it could be for a reason that seems perfectly reasonable to the roommate, who may think it odd that someone wants to share.</p>
<p>That being said, that fridge better stay on his side of the room!!</p>
<p>Thanks also to rrah & sharon. I will definitely check the college bookstore site. I don’t know what sort of books D will need as one class is a freshman seminar and one is a required writing class. Thanks for the tip about the AAA discount, H & I are members.</p>
<p>ilovetoquilt, which NYC school are your D’s attending? Mine is heading to NYU.</p>
<p>That does sound odd, especially from a guy. S is bringing the fridge his older brother used (for just one year, as he was in an apt the other three years). We never considered that he wouldn’t share it!</p>
<p>Zetesis, it would be kind of nice if S would express any sort of emotion at all about going away to school!</p>
<p>That is exactly what my husband said - it’s got to be coming from the kid’s mother.</p>
<p>The room has the oddest set up I’ve ever seen - there isn’t even a “my side” and “your side”. The beds are at right angles to each other. The desks are tiny little built in things. One whole wall is two closests and a built in chest of drawers that they share. As I said, I have no idea where even one fridge will fit.</p>
<p>Missypie…at D1’s school it appears that each kid usually brings their own fridge because they don’t hold much. As athletes she and her roomie had gartorade, yougurts, Britta pitchers (filtered water so they didn’t have to buy bottles), cream cheese, butter, milk, etc. Neither went to cafeteria for breakfast so had stuff in their dorm. Your son’s roomie might be planning on having lots of stuff.</p>
<p>Thank you all for the heads up about book lists already posted. That never occurred to me. I checked D’s school bookstore website - the books are listed with publisher and year, but not ISBN number. I guess that is enough information to avoid buying the wrong edition, yes?</p>
<p>This is D2’s last week at home. She has a choice to leave on Friday or very early
Saturday. Practice starts late afternoon on Saturday. We spent the weekend at the cabin with friends and she refused to talk about leaving. She has not shopped for any new clothes, school supplies or wanted to learn how to log on for school emails.There has been no packing. She hates change but I am starting to worry!!!</p>
<p>missypie, I don’t blame you for not wanting to share it. I’m torn about sharing it with D. I do like the end - even if you have a bad roommate match, you will still find friends. That’s exactly what happened to me in college.</p>
<p>My first roommate was terrible - that was the era of truly random matching. She was a senior. You can just imagine the personality of a person who has gone to the same school all thet way through and gets to senior year and doesn’t have a roommate preference. Fortunately, she went to student teach second semester (to spread her meanness to small children - yikes!), and I paired up with a girl who (coincidentally) was the odd person out in a triple…we had a great experience together.</p>
<p>I had the classic roommate-with-a-hometown-boyfriend problem. He visited most weekends and I took refuge with the sophomore next door who ended up being one of my best friends.</p>
<p>D1 could not have been more mismatched with her freshman roommate. The roommate matching questionnaire asked how much television you watched; D watches virtually none. All we can figure out is that her roommate either lied, or filled out the questionnaire with her parents watching (or drastically changed her habits at college, which seems unlikely, since she was obviously very familiar with every show on TV), since she couldn’t possibly have checked “0-1 hours/week.” All she ever did was watch television. Once when visiting my daughter, I walked into the room and said hi, and her roommate didn’t even look up from the TV. They had nothing in common. But one does survive even bad roommate experiences…</p>
<p>My rising junior son had a different refrigerator experience with his roomie. Roomie emailed son and said he would bring tv and gaming system and would my son please take care of fridge and microwave. Everybody happy.</p>
<p>On move in day, we bring fridge and microwave. Roomie brings flat screen tv, gaming system, AND fridge and microwave…it turns out he has severe gluten and other allergies and is on a restricted diet. He didn’t want to give the impression that he was selfish or didn’t want to share and he didn’t want to be thought of as weird or different, and he didn’t want to make waves/a bad impression with my son.</p>
<p>they had a great year together and although they pledged different fraternities, they are wonderful friends and do a lot of things together.</p>
<p>We are hoping that our D is lucky with her rommie. The met at orientation weekend and it if off great. They have been talking weekly and seem to have a lot of the same values. The college also has an optional Roomie contract that girls can sign and they both have agreed to do so. We hope it works because our D has never shared a room with anyone for more than a month at summer camp.</p>
<p>So here is how the increase in the minimum wage has affected my son: He works as a grocery bagger - when he reached his 1 year anniv., he was given a small raise, to $7.10 an hour. As of last week, the minimum wage was increased to $7.25. He is normally scheduled to work 12 hours a week, so the increase in minimum wage was worth $1.80 to him.</p>
<p>The scheduling lady told them over the weekend that everyone was going to be cut at least one hour a week since payroll has increased. He was sent home an hour early on Saturday.</p>
<p>So: $1.80 minus $7.25 = ($5.45) net decrease. True life example of how minimum wage workers lose money due to increases in minimum wage. (Interesting that I always hear this argument framed in terms of increases killing small business, but this is a large grocery chain doing this to their employees.)</p>
<p>PRJ, without the ISBN you can’t be sure of the edition. Most teachers will want the latest but in many cases it doesn’t matter. email to the prof will usually get a response and the isbn (if there’s a TA instead, I would email the TA).</p>
<p>Off to drop the laptop for return at UPS. Spent morning ordering new laptop (not Dell), getting return authorization on the laptop from Dell (still more monetary issues that need resolving but my case person is not available until tomorrow) and following up with Amex and advising them that these charges should not be paid (they were very helpful as always).</p>
<p>Missypie-my son made it through the first two years without a frig or microwave. We would have happily bought them for him but he felt he really didn’t need them. (he is my low needs child). This fall he will be in a student apartment with two other boys he does not know. They all have been informed as to who they are sharing the apartment with and not a one of them have contacted the others. The apartment only comes furnished with the furnitures. The kitchen only comes with refrigerator and stove. My son has made no effort to make a list or even tell me what he would like for the apartment.</p>
<p>Funny story from law school. In Constitutional Law,** the **case is Marbury v. Madison. The teacher had planned to spend at least three days discussing *Marbury v. Madison. * He kept asking questions that none of us could answer; he grew more and more frustrated at us.</p>
<p>He finally realized that in the newest edition of the text book - which he decided to use without even looking at it - the editors edited *Marbury v. Madison *down to four paragraphs instead of printing the whole case.</p>
<p>sharonohio, thanks. I wasn’t sure if there were unique ISBNs for each edition. D’s campus bookstore (online) gives the option of used (if available) or new, with a good price break for used. Searching out books (e.g., Amazon, B&N) instead of using the campus bookstore seems like a lot of work. Are the savings significant?</p>