Listen, moving always the easiest thing in world. Moving during a pandemic can prove difficult. Moving during a pandemic the weekend before school starts is guaranteed not a fun time. Welcome to this blog and I will be giving you the lowdown on my experience on college move-in during COVID-19.
I live off campus (non-USC Housing) and will probably not be giving more details than that because doing that on the internet is dangerous. My place gives me the space to have my own bedroom for the first time in college! For my non-LA natives, this fact may seem surprising; for context LA can be on the expensive side and thus many students (myself included) choose to live in doubles (2 per bedroom). So, having my own bedroom for the first time was exciting and I had many, many plans. However, this entailed that I effectively completely move myself out of my parents’ home in Bell Gardens, CA, which is luckily only about 30 minutes away from campus.
Now I, being a stereotypical broke college student, wasn’t about to pay for any movers, especially since I didn’t want to break quarantine during my move. So, I got my big girl pants and my work shoes on, rented a U-Haul, and grabbed the one friend I’ve seen throughout quarantine to help me package my entire livelihood into a 10 by 11-foot truck. Driving a large U-Haul truck for the first time proved to be an experience but I made it to my new place safe and sound! I illegally parked the truck and then proceeded to spend most of the day unloading boxes and getting bedframes to fit through door frames.
Of course, the first thing I set up other than my bed was my workspace, which has only become doubly important now that we are all taking classes from home. My setup has two monitors and a light up keyboard (stereotypical gamer) and I’ve greatly made use of all this screen space. After that was done, I spent the rest of the weekend decorating my room and making it feel mine.
Pictured above, my cat enjoying the new digs.
There’s a twofold lesson here. One, moving during a pandemic is hard but not impossible and having a license is handy for getting your hands on U-Haul trucks for the cheap. Second, your workspace at home is really important; spend some hours to make small quality of life improvements for yourself in your workplace, it’ll definitely be worth it!
