Also , if anyone is looking for a power surge power strip, I found a great one at BBB with a 15 foot cord. Most have 4 or 6 foot cords
Wow thatâs an amazing cord! I bought an 8 ft, and those are tough to find.
What a great thing that your school bookstore price matches. The school bookstores in general must have a tough time figuring out how many books to stock when many kids order from online sites these days.
My bookstore price matches too! @carolinamom2boys itâs a new program. Thatâs an awesome find thanks for sharing!
@carolinamom2boys, I just saw the other day that Dâs college bookstore price matches. She got the first year course she was wanting, but the book requirements are listed as tbd. She wonât find out the rest of her schedule til we go for move in/orientation.
I have another good textbook shopping tip- if any of your D or Sâs classes require novels or other non textbook books, check and see if Barnes and Noble carries it. It may be cheaper than the bookstore- particularly if you order online(B&N books are cheaper from their website than in store).
@frenchtoastlover Glad to hear you are still doing well. That article really highlights the reasons we like you â you are humble and helpful. Wishing you the best as you start your first year!
@psychmomma: A topper and a mattress pad? So the mattress pad is just for protecting the topper from sweat and perhaps a stain or two?
"âŠa mother asked at orientation yesterday was âHow will my daughter ever get married going to a womenâs college?â
@Cheeringsection : â@readingclaygirl I think her perception of college is stuck somewhere before 1960.â
As is her perception of the pool of eligible marriage partners.
Well, this discussion inspired me to see if Dâs bookstore has finally listed the books for her classes, and it HAS. Looks like they offer a new, used and rental option for every class, and an ebook option for some. The rental prices are VERY good-as little as $15 for one text, but Amazon beats the bookstore in every case but one. Chegg seem about the same as Amazon for those that matter. A couple of code-required books, but rentals are offered for those.
Had an interesting âlistenâ this evening driving D and two of her friends home from dance. One girl, who has a full tuition scholarship for her singing, and is a music major, is worried that she wonât fit in and that she doesnât sing as well as other girls she heard during auditions. The other one canât even decide what to do with her life (and her mom is no help) and D is worried that sheâs ânot smart enoughâ. I think that with school starting soon, theyâre all jumpy. Now theyâre in the living room watching some chick flick. I think this is likely the last time for awhile. It was good to be reminded that even very accomplished kids have doubts and fears going into something new.
Wanted to tell you all something a woman I met today shared with me.
When both her boys were in college, one a sophomore and one a freshman, her husband died in the fall of that college year, and she had to figure out how to keep her boys in school (how to pay for it).
She and her husband had begun to pay for both boysâ school using a tuition payment plan through a tuition payment service. The financial aid officer at one of the colleges told her to examine the documents with the tuition payment service to see who signed for the payment plan, who was listed as payer of record. She did, and it was her husband.
As the plan they chose also had an insurance coverage attached, the tuition payment service honored their word and released the mother from the rest of the payments for the school year.
She related to me how eternally grateful she was for that. She worked hard and sacrificed, and worked with the colleges, to keep her boys in school and they both graduated. One of them went to law school at a university my younger daughter will be looking at, and it was over this point that the woman and I bonded and began to share with each other this morning before 7 a.m. as I purchased a kayak from her at her yet-to-officially open yard sale.
@HappyFace2018 @psychmomma - regarding the order of stuff to put on the bed - I plan to pack it for DS and DH in reverse order so they put them on in the right order. I had even considered numbering the pieces. 
I can do that for anyone on CC if needed!
Currently we have a dorm foothill on my bathroom vanity of all the washed stuff waiting for the other layers to be packed.
Two new questions:
- Is anyone buying/using a footlocker/trunk for hauling, then to be used as a sort of coffee table? DH and I both used them and I'm in favor but he says he never used his - but he lived in a suite that provided common room furniture.
- DS seems to have been assigned to a "three room triple" which has two tiny rooms and one bigger room. I think it would make sense for the doubled boys to share the bigger room and use one of the tiny rooms as the "common room" instead of cramming two boys into the tiny room and using the larger as the common room - has anyone heard of doing that? Presumably one boy, not my DS, will get one of the tiny rooms as a single. I say "not my DS" because he wants to share freshman year and because he'd rather bargain for something else in the mix instead of the single. I'm also somewhat aggravated, though DS seems to think it's just fine, about the bathroom being down two floors of stairs in the "vertical hall" he's on. I gather it's in the basement, shared by 36 boys.
For some reason I always assumed that all large dorms had bathrooms on each floor @fretfulmother. Iâm one of those who has gotten up once a night for a bathroom break since I was a toddler. Having to go down two floors would drive me crazy!
No footlocker here-I had one that my mother scoured from a flea market-the thing weighed a ton, but it did make a nice coffee table. D was not in favor. The new ones donât seem all that sturdy anyway, for what you pay. Those storage foot rests might be a better buy. We have one in our living room that is 7 years old and had held up to all kinds of abuse.
D packed and space bagged some more things today and gave her visiting friend a space bag lesson. Friend was worried about how she would get all of her things to college.
@Waiting2exhale what a sweet story. I think Iâve shared before that my husbandâs mother passed away 2 weeks after his HS graduation, and his father had died when he was 6. Thanks to helpful neighbors, bosses, friends, and a very understanding administration and faculty at UW, H was able to attend college and finish with a double bachelorâs degree. Heâs a walking example of âit takes a villageâ. I like to see stories that show the softer side of colleges too.
Did majority of the kids here got triples? It came as a big surprise to many parents at DDâs school as kids got assigned to triples and quads. My DD got assigned to triple instead of double she requested. She would prefer triple over a single though.
@sseamom - I totally agree! I always need a bathroom/drink break in the middle of the night. Maybe adolescent males who havenât borne three pregnancies have stronger bladders.
@fretfulmother: My kids always wanted to know why, now that they are big, I still use night lights.
Well, I want to ask them, why do you think?
@Ballerina016 : Yeah, my son wanted that triple, but alas, has been in a single from day one. (Sigh).
@Waiting2exhale - LOL! Yes, we have a fairly well-lit house even at night. Someone reported to me that we could cause vision problems that way, because âthey found a correlation between people using nightlights and vision problemsââŠthat led to an explanation of the word âcorrelationâ
@Ballerina016 - I had a triple freshman year at MIT, a âcrowded doubleâ where you pay less because itâs officially a double and they put another kid in there. It was totally fine, if that makes you feel better about your DD! What dorm did she get?
@fretfulmother Her first choice-BC.
My sweet girl will be in a 6. This is a large suite with a private bathroom, full refrigerator and microwave. She saw the room during the admitted students day in April and loved it! Itâs separated into a 3-2-1 (sheâs in the 2 section with another Elliott-Honors student). Iâve seen pictures of the room and have the floor plan for her specific room. She and several of her roomies met on the admitted students day when the students were separated by which school they were admitted to at GW. The girls became fast friends and chat/FaceTime all the time.
I was initially concerns about six girls living together but then realized 1) the girls arenât concerned :)) 2) my sweet girl has spent every summer since 5th grade attending a camp or traveling abroad with 10-15 girls (she attended a camp at Yale were an entire floor of girls shared one TINY bathroom) and 3) she studies with earbuds in her ear, the TV on and Netflix in the background on her computer :).
How she studies use to concerned me but when she continued to excel in her IB program I stopped mentioning it all together. I think she will be fine 
Also, when I realized the 6 was less expensive than a 2 I did a little happy dance!
Wow! Over 600 posts. I have not been around for awhile! So I will just say hi! S is ready for Reed, and the more we read about other schools and options, the more we know that the right school chose him. Funny how that works.
Just thought I would check in.
@Ballerina016 we are waiting to hear from Reed about dorm assignments. They said early Aug. My son applied to dorms that only had doubles with a divider. So basically a double turned into two singles. But he is someone who needs downtime. Socializing take a lot of work for him and I think he would miserable in a triple or anything more than a double. He was allowed to choose 5 dorms, and he spent an hour looking at floor plans to make sure he would end up with one one other person.