College Essential #4: Random Things You Might Forget

Many of my friends are a year younger than me and are just getting ready to go to college. I was in their position a year ago, and I was so nervous. I've already made a post about packing lists, but I thought that it might help you guys to see some of the smaller, more random items that you might not necessarily think of! Or maybe you've heard you should bring them, but you are unsure if you actually should. Here are the first four I thought of!

1. Makeup removing wipes - One of the weirdest things I do is shower right after parties. While all of my friends will go straight to bed after a long night of partying, I almost always shower before going to bed. I absolutely hate waking up the next morning after being all sweaty and gross! I'd rather shower, sleep, and wake up feeling clean. Speaking from experience, there WILL be nights when you get back to your room, and you can't imagine anything worse than taking the time to remove your makeup. However, it's important to take your makeup off every night, no matter how tired you are. Makeup removing wipes are a solution to this problem. You don't need any water or anything, all you need to do is rub the wipe on your face/eyes and you're set! I use Neutrogena's Makeup Remover Cleansing Towlettes, walgreens.com, $7.29. You can find them everywhere. They're great! I've never had any problems with them. Obviously they don't give as thorough a cleansing as your normal face washing method, but they get the job done. Your skin will thank you in the morning.

2. Speakers for your computer - I have never used speakers for my computer, even at home. I don't know why, because they add SO much to the sound experience! I can't watch a TV show on my computer anymore without wanting some real speakers. I think that the reason I didn't buy any at first must've been because I had a roommate. However, I'm sure that you and your roommate will want to listen to music together at some point. And when you do, you'll be thankful that you have speakers that are better than your built in ones. I bought JBL's Duet Speaker System, amazon.com, $37.85. For some reason, I thought they'd be way more expensive. Just like the Iomega external hard drive I posted in the last post, these look great with my Macbook Pro. You can also see a different external hard drive I use, it's by Seagate. I don't even remember buying it but somehow I ended up with it!

3. Plain shirts that you don't mind ruining - I don't know about you guys, but my school is BIG on themed parties. I will not lie, I can get extremely into them. However, there are always those themes that you just aren't feeling, but you still want to do something so you don't feel lame. This is when plain shirts come in. At the beginning of the year, we had a party with the theme "Rep Yo Hood." While I do love my hood (SF Bay Area) I didn't have any proper Bay attire. No sports teams jerseys, no Mac Dre shirts, and nothing with the Golden Gate Bridge on it. So I pulled out an old white v-neck and wrote my area code on it. It was perfect! I met a ton of people who were also in my area code and we were able to successfully rep our hoods together.

4. Thermometer - I still don't own one, but I think I'll buy one for next year. Chances are, you'll get sick in college. Whether it's from a lack of sleep or living in such close quarters with other people there is a large chance that you will get sick. I had swine flu on my 19th birthday in October, and it was one of my lowest points of first semester. Not only was I sick on my birthday, but it was my first time being sick away from home. I looked just like the little girl on the right. It was awful. However, unlike the girl on the right, I didn't have a thermometer. I knew I had a fever, but I couldn't track it at all. By the time I was well enough to go out and buy one, I didn't need it anymore. Of course, the next time I realized that I should get a thermometer was when I was too sick to leave my dorm! Target sells a bunch of basic ones, and so when I'm doing my shopping at the beginning of the year I'm definitely planning on getting one.

Previous College Essentials: #1 - Longchamps, #2 - ID Holder, #3 -  A Good Packing List