Things You MUST Teach Your Children Before Sending Them to College

My freshman year of college I ran into quite a few obstacles, I was after all on my own for the first time in eighteen years. However, I have to admit I was in a much better place than the majority of my dorm-mates. In fact, for the first few months of living in the dorm, I found that I was constantly having to teach my peers how to do laundry. LAUNDRY.

It started off with one guy named Joe, who I forever after referred to as "Laundry Joe," as he had the classic comedy show problem of shrinking all of his clothing in the dryer. Then there was Cory from Chicago, a nice, young, enthusiastic man who could not for the life of him follow the directions listed on the outside of his liquid detergent. Cory had the issue of using entirely too much detergent so that he had to run his clothing through a rinse cycle several times after his soapy clothing had given him a rash. I remember calling my mother and thanking her for making me do my own laundry starting at the age of thirteen. My mother was not surprised as I had expected that she would be after receiving a "thank you for making me do my chores," phone call. She simply said, "well, you had to learn some time."

My peers did not however, learn as quickly as I had anticipated. Upon moving into a house sophomore year with five of my best girlfriends I realized that quite a few of the dishes in the cabinet were dirty on a regular basis. I conferred with a few of my roommates and no one could understand why someone would put crusty dishes back into the cabinet. It all became very clear to us soon after one of our "roomie dinners," in which we all pitched in to cook and later to clean. It turns out that one of my roommates was under the impression that if you simply ran dishes under luke warm water, without soap mind you, that the germs would be killed off. She did not use any type of dish washing utensil, just her hand, to wipe away excess food, then place it on the drying rack. When we asked her who had done all the dishes in her family she gave us a look that said, "I dunno," and casually said, "my mom."

A year later, after having moved into a new apartment with one former roommate and one new roommate I found myself even more agast. My female roommate called me one night explaining that she wanted to try to cook a full meal by herself for the first time. She had a few questions for me, however, such as "what's a pan?" And "but where do we keep the pots?" Her new cooking interest started three fires in our oven that year. Each time they caught fire she would stand in front of the oven and scream until either I ran in from my room, or someone ran up from downstairs to put out the flames. I do have to say, that she did learn these important kitchen utensils and has since become a pretty good cook, but those were scary times.

It was the male roommate that really threw me for a loop. He had absolutely no idea how to laundry, STILL, after three years of college. He also hadn't the slightest idea of how to load a dishwasher, (yes this year I insisted on a dishwasher), or how to clean his bathroom. I don't think that he washed his sheets at all his first semester, and we were forced to close his door when he wasn't around to rid the stench resonating from his room to the rest of the apartment.

Later that same year I had to teach my male roomate how to boil noodles for mac and cheese, I kid you not. He had decided that microwaving Ramen Noodles was something that underclassman did, and he needed a meal with more nutritional value, like calcium from cheesy noodles. Health was not a concept that he understood, he assumed that by eating potatoe chips, he was eating his fair share of veggies. I also had to teach him how to iron, how to properly clean a cut, and how to empty the lent collector in the dryer. Oh, and did I mention that I had to kill all the spiders in his room for him as well?

Now I am not writing this article to pronounce my abilities as little Miss Susie Homemaker. Rather the opposite. I was raised by two career-oriented, yet wonderful parents who instilled in me the ability to focus on my education and career goals, because I could manage my time well due to the skills that were given to me at an early age. I still cannot believe how little my peers knew when their parents first shoved them off into the wide-eyed world of a college career.

I have a twenty year old brother, who is about to begin his junior year of college, and I'll admit, he does call me asking all sorts of ridiculous questions. Next year he'll be living with male and female roommates, and I made him promise to be good to his roommates and to always pull his own weight. We laugh now as we compare stories of college roommates, but at the time, I have to say it was frustrating. I mean, I loved them, but come on, sooner or later everyone has to learn the basic functions of surviving in the adult world.

Just in case you're about to send your kids off to college, here's a checklist to get them started:

- Basic laundry skills

- Boiling noodles, baking cookies, heating up soup, etc.

- Health knowledge

- First Aid Kit & Cold/Flu Medicine, that stuff can be expensive!

- Changing a tire, checking the car's oil, etc.

- How to balance a checkbook

- Spider/Ant spray

- Make sure their living environment comes equipped with working fire extinguishers.

- Have copies made of their keys and either hide them, or have them exchange them with someone trustworthy, believe me, their going to lock themselves out of their place ALL the time, but you'll never know about it.

- Make copies of their birth certificate, social security, etc. Also have back up photo I.D., because once they lose their liscense, or wallet, they're going to need this to replace their liscense.

- Ear plugs. I'm not kidding here, I had a roommate who owned an alarm clock that would scream "OH MY GOD IT'S TIME TO GET UP!" on one setting, and on the other setting it said "GET OUTTA BED, SLEEPY HEAD. GET OUTTA BED, SLEEPY HEAD!" It was awful.

- Headphones

- Basic dishwashing utensils, (they'll want to clean their dishes in the dorm bathroom, gross, but it has to happen somewhere).

- As many organizational items as you can afford, dorm rooms are small and tricky, but if you have a place for everything the relationship between roommates will be SO much better.

- An answering machine, because they won't ever answer their cell phone, or check their cell messages, but the excitement of having their own dorm room answering machine will mean that they are that much more likely to call you back.

- Talk to them seriously about being curteous to their roommates and dormmates. No hair dryers going on in the room at 6am, take it to the bathroom. Don't invite people to party in their room when their roommate has a final the next morning. Don't blast music during quiet hours, don't steal everyone else's wipe erase board makers, etc.

Best of luck to parents and new co-eds!