Things I'm Glad I Brought With Me to College

After walking into a gross smelling bathroom yesterday, I realized how grateful I am for some of the little things I brought with me--both practical items, like my Febreze, and more sentimental objects, like pictures of my friends and family. So here we go, in no particular order:

Things I'm Glad I Brought With Me to College

1. Febreze: Bathrooms are smelly.
   
2. Clorox disinfecting wipes: At the beginning of the year, one of the guys across the hall kept using our toilet while drunk, and drunk guys evidently have very poor aim. The results were pretty gross. Fortunately, that stopped after a month or so.
   
3. Earplugs: Dorms are notoriously loud, and mine particularly so. It doesn't help that I'm a light sleeper and have a roommate who goes to sleep anytime between 2:30 and 6am. Unfortunately, after a while earplugs become very uncomfortable, to the point of pain. But they were nice to have in the beginning.
   
4. Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty (click!): This stuff is awesome. It's like silly putty, but in a larger quantity and more fun to play with. It's great for stress reduction, putty art, and making friends--if you play with it around people, they're bound to come over and ask what the heck you're doing. I brought one variety with me, Twilight (no relation to the books...), which changes from dark purple to light blue, and my dad sent me another for my birthday called Monster Mash, which is purple and sparkly and glows in the dark. I shouldn't be having this much fun with them, but I do. It's nice to feel like a kid again sometimes.
   
5. Pictures of people I love: This is pretty much a given. College is a scary world. Sure, you make friends (hopefully), but there's a big difference between a friend you've known for 4 months and one you've known for 4 years. It's nice to have constant reminder that there are people back home who love you.
   
6. Fleece throw blanket: Throw blankets serve many purposes. You can use them as an extra blanket if you're too cold at night (though in my case, it's the opposite--I boil at night), snuggle under them to watch a movie, or grab them while running out the door when the fire alarm goes off at 2am (because some idiot burnt popcorn).
   
7. Stuffed animals: No one's too old for stuffed animals. Especially if you're used to having pets at home sleeping on your bed every night, you'll want some stuffed animals to at least remind you of your cat/dog/guinea pig back home, since most likely the only non-human beings allowed in your room are plants and fish (and, perhaps, mold). I'm not sure whether this applies to guys (I haven't seen any stuffed animals in their rooms), but I'm certainly glad I have them. My stuffed animals also have a lot of sentimental value: I've had my stuffed bear since I was 1, my sister made me a large stuffed cat (with different colored body parts to represent each of our 4 cats at home), my best friend made me a "lucky bunny," that same best friend sent me a stuffed animal version of her university's mascot, and I have a beanie baby frog to remind me of my (now deceased, but alive when I left him) African Dwarf Frog.
   
8. My pop-bead necklace: This is one of those things entirely unique to me, but I'll try to broaden it to apply to other situations. Pop beads are little plastic beads that snap together and are typically used to make DNA strands in high school biology classes. I was pretty good friends with my 9th grade biology teacher, and he let me keep my necklace of pop beads. The story's more complicated than that, but I'll stop there. The moral: bring small items that bring back good memories.
   

Obviously there are a thousand more things I'm glad I have, but these are ones I could have forgotten but am glad I didn't. Feel free to let me know something I should have included. :)