Getting Ready for College

I would have never imagined it would take this much time, effort, and money to prepare a child for his first year of college. Well, I sort of suspected the money part, although there sure are a lot of additional costs besides the tuition and room/board. The paperwork, though, did surprise me. And the sheer amount of stuff necessary to equip a dorm room and the child moving into it! Here's just a portion of what has consumed my July:

A Health Form to be filled out by David, myself, and then his doctor, which meant an appointment with said doctor. This took two trips to the doctor's office, one for the physical and one for the follow-up on the TB test that the college required. It also took two phone calls to the college to find out for sure that a medical waiver was possible for the required tetanus shot.

Medical Waiver stating David did not need health insurance from the college, that he was covered by our medical insurance policy.

The paperwork to set up the automatic payment plan for David's tuition.

Checking with BlueCross to make sure David will be still covered by our health insurance plan while he is in college.

Getting the final transcript sent in to UE.

Checking to see if our homeowner's insurance will cover David's dorm room items in case of fire or theft.

Making a list of all the items he needs for his room and then finding all those items. These include things like trash cans, desk lamp, laundry detergent, clothes basket (he has to wash his own clothes!), and any food items he might want for snacking purposes.

Ditto for clothes. Most of his are a bit threadbare out, so it's practically a complete new wardrobe for him, down to swimming trunks and sneakers!

New sheets, blankets, pillows, and bath towels.

Rental of the Bedloft, which will free up some floor space in his small dorm room.

Rental of the MicroFridge that seems to be an essential part of dorm life these days.

Make sure his computer is ready to go.

Got the battery for the laptop.

Still need to find a printer/scanner/copier for his room, although he does have access to printers in the computer lab and is allotted 200 printed pages each semester.

You might ask what is left for the month of August? He still needs to get his driver's license, if we can get that done sometime in the next couple of weeks. And we still need school supplies (notebooks, pencils, printer paper, that sort of thing), along with personal supplies (manicure set, vitamin C, shampoo, etc.). I believe he'll have to find a winter coat up there in Indiana sometime before the snow flies. Oh, and the most important thing for August? Cleaning out David's bedroom!!! He is so looking forward to doing that!