The real experience of packing to go to Durham

It’s something every Durham student goes through at the start of each term, and it’s never the simplest process. Trying to cram everything you own into a car so it can be transported halfway across the country is pretty much a canon event at this point. And if you’ve managed to make it at all efficient, please tell me. I am at this moment, surrounded by half-filled bags and empty coffee cups. But feeling both nostalgic for my first year of university, as well as procrastinating from my own packing, I’ve decided to encapsulate the emotional experience every Durham student goes through.

Step One: Organise clothes into neat stacks by category. Jeans, tops, jumpers, coats – and of course their respective subcategories: going out tops, jeans are so ill-fitting/stained they can no longer be worn outside, jumpers appropriate for Durham weather, jumpers you hope if you believe in hard enough will be appropriate for the Durham weather (see below).

Step Two: Realise half of the clothes you were looking for are in fact in different laundry baskets all over the house. There elapses an hour break whilst you try and gather underwear in the world’s most frustrating and/or boring scavenger hunt, resulting in you passing through the kitchen for a morale-boosting snack too many times.

Step Three: Packing commences.

Step Four: Regret that you weren’t a scout and never actually learned how to army roll clothes.

Step Five: Realise you’ve packed the clothes you were going to wear on the journey up. Unpack your suitcase in its entirety.

Step Six: Existential crisis. Are clothes really necessary? Am I just buying into the hyper-materialistic consumer culture that centuries of capitalism has entrenched in our society?

Most Read

This year is slightly different, so here is the episode schedule for Celebrity Traitors this week

I’ve just realised that three cast members from Celebrity Traitors were in Game of Thrones

The ridiculous fortunes of The Celebrity Traitors: Their net worths, from £500K to £50 million

Step Seven: Irritated parent who’s relying on you finishing packing that evening in order to actually depart for university tells you to save your political and revolutionary thoughts for university, where someone will actually take you seriously.

Step Eight: Wonder if the knick-knack that’s been gathering dust on your windowsill for the best part of the decade would transform your university and turn a mould-filled cell into a room fit for the front page of Architectural Digest (but actually my posters deserved to be on there).

Step Nine: Realise in your panic you’ve bought six frying pans but don’t actually own any plates. Frantic texts start pinging at increasingly fraught levels on your new house group chat. Passive aggression and over-exaggerated freneticism run rampant.

Step Ten: Look at the clock. It’s midnight and you have six hours to sleep before you depart. Collapse in bed full of nihilism and despair that if you’ve lost anything you’ve lost it forever.

Step Eleven: Remember Durham does in fact have shops/access to the internet, and no decision is truly final.

Step Twelve: Filled with pre-Durham nerves and jitters, you oversleep and end up scrambling to leave the house. Only when you’re on the motorway do you realise you forgot your toothbrush, all your chargers, and your keys.

For more of the latest news, guides, gossip, and memes, follow The Durham Tab on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.