When senior Mohini Banerjee boards her flight to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., she plans on packing more than just her clothes and school supplies. She wants to take those Polaroid photos from her bookshelf, that “Grey’s Anatomy” cup on her desk and those snow globes from her voyages around the world.
And despite her concern that her bright pink music box from her elementary school days may shatter on her journey to Pittsburgh, she knows that the most of the sentimental trinkets from her room back at home will follow her on her journey to college.
“A lot of it is not necessary,” Banerjee said, “but I guess I want the familiar comfort of home in the dorm.”
In the fall as seniors head for college, they will leave behind old memories to replace them with new experiences. Yet, many plan on taking nostalgic objects with them to remind of their past.
For senior Bhushan Balagar, who will be attending UC Berkeley, a majority of these memories are encapsulated in mugs. On FBLA field trips and conferences across the country, Balagar would bring back a souvenir mug for his parents. One day, when Balagar handed his parents another mug, his parents said he needed to stop; they had more than enough mugs lying around the house. But to Balagar these mugs hold memories of his adventures and travels, plastered with images from the places he’s visited and crafted into quirky shapes.
On his desk lies the one mug he knows he’ll bring with him to college: a white mug that his friend picked up on a trip to Los Angeles. The mug is simple, with only one word printed across the middle: create. A mug that continually inspires him to, quite simply, create.
“I want to create. I’m very into design and stuff,” Balagar said. “I don’t know what I want to do yet, but I want to create.”
A framed photo of his family sits above his desk at home, surrounded by the objects he’s collected over his lifetime, including random fragments of inside jokes with his friends. A bright pink stuffed animal Patrick Star from “Spongebob” has also commandeered its own portion of the desk. Balagar doesn’t plan on hauling it all to college, but he hopes to sort through his belongings and take the ones that mean the most to him.
He stops for a moment and chuckles — he knows the sentimental haul won’t include Patrick Star. But it will include a gift from his younger brother.
“He carved out my name in wood because he was in woodshop, so it was nice, and I’ll definitely take that,” Balagar said. “It’s something [my brother] made with his hands for weeks without even telling me. I think that’s really sweet so it’s going to be like a … family memory.”
Similar to the wooden letters for Balagar, many keepsakes are about remembering family and loved ones, even when they are miles away. For senior Ron Talmor, who will be attending Georgetown University in Washington D.C., this means carrying memories of his sister and parents and, most of all, his golden retriever, Melon. In Cupertino, Talmor spends a majority of his waking hours alongside his furry companion, but when Talmor is in college, Melon will be miles away.
“Here, my screensaver is him right now,” Talmor said as he glances down at his phone. “So that’s not changing. Yeah, that’s him on my bed. That’s not changing. More pictures, though.”
Despite being over 2,800 miles away from home, some things in his life will remain constant. Every morning, Talmor will continue to set the alarm on his cellphone, then he’ll turn to his side to face his bed stand and set the alarm on his decade-old atomic alarm clock. His family jokes that Talmor’s insistence on being on time is a trait he got from his grandfather.
“My grandfather is obsessed with clocks,” Talmor said. “When you go to his bedroom he has a whole wall full of more than 10 different clocks, from different time zones.”
To others, carrying too many tangible mementos to college seems unnecessary. Senior Manasa Handady, who considers herself less worried about the past, wants to keep track of the new memories she will make. However, she does not want to be excessive with keepsakes from her past.
“I would take only the bare minimum,” Handady said, “because the dorm rooms are kind of small, so I don’t want to clutter up my space.”
In her room, she keeps a journal where she details the main events in her life through scribbles and doodles. The old journal will remain at her house as she plans to buy a new journal to record college memories.
A new journal for a fresh start.
Others also find it unnecessary to bring too many sentimental objects to college with them.
Senior Suresh Talapaneni, who will also be attending UC Berkeley, doesn’t feel as though he will be far enough away from home that he will need to take any trinkets with him.
“[UC Berkeley] is an hour away,” Talapaneni said. “I feel like whenever I need something that is really important, I can just come back home.”
Yet, for Talapaneni as is the case with most seniors, he will cherish the ability to easily communicate with his friends and family back home.
“I feel like the things that I would need to connect with people are my laptop, my phone, my messenger [app],” Talapaneni said. “I don’t really think any object that I have could replace what calling someone would give me.”
But unlike Talapaneni, Banerjee’s journey to college is 2,620 miles away, and she plans on carrying as many items from home as she can fit in her suitcase.
“There is nothing I can’t particularly live without,” Banerjee said. “I just want to bring as much stuff as I can … so that if I walk into my dorm, I won’t realize that I am 3,000 miles away from here [home].”