At the end of every summer, I find myself tasked with the burden of boxing up and packing away my earthly possessions to fill out my Wittenberg dorm room or apartment. I fold my clothes, wrestle down my comforter and set aside posters for the bleak, white walls.
All of my things are then shoved into the back of my car. If something doesn’t fit, no matter how preferred, it is left behind.
Even once this tiny slice of my material possession is unloaded into my whitewashed, closet-sized living space, many things remain perpetually boxed: socks, underwear and toiletries find their enduring home in clear plastic boxes whether at home, in transit or on campus. By May, I will have completed the whole of my undergraduate life without once fully unpacking.
An oft-neglected aspect of student life is its transience: as students, we live our lives in boxes, carrying with us only that which is easily transportable to and from our homes.
This restlessness contributes, I believe, to a loss of permanence and a lack of belonging. If my stay in this space that I call home is so ephemeral that I can’t even be bothered with fully unpacking, why should I bother developing a sense of community with my hallmates and housemates? Why should I bother setting down roots or integrating myself into campus culture if I’m never even going to unpack my hairbrush?
This is not a problem unique to Wittenberg, nor to any one university. In a system where students live in a space for only two semesters at a time, transience is inevitable. Nonetheless, it impresses an uneven burden on students to artificially create an atmosphere of permanence where none really exists.
If it doesn’t matter, why mention it? If this feeling of instability is inexorable, why bring it up? And what are we supposed to do about it?
First, I mention this because, in my four years in undergraduate life, I have never once heard someone properly identify this struggle. Every student experiences it, yet none mention it. This is curious to me: having worked in residence life and intentionally extended efforts to artificially create community, a lack of permanence is just such a problem that we attempted to solve with comradery, floor meetings and building-wide events. Acknowledging the existence of this problem is at the very least the first step in combatting it.
Second, I don’t think there is a simple solution, or perhaps a solution at all, to this issue of transience. It is part of the core nature of the collegiate structure and may be a necessary evil of tethered and temporary freedom from the constraints of youth. I do believe, though, that a conscious recognition both on the part of students and curators of the student experience may be a step forward in making students feel at home, even if they never truly are.
The fact perpetually stands, though, that my boxes remain packed.
