Since I have made up my mind to attend one school over another, we can officially start the “pre-move” moving stage. It is time for me to assess my belongings and

- go through my stuff at my parents house, throw a lot of it out and donate stuff I don’t use.
- Pack up the remaining books at my parents house and take them with me.
- Ask if I can take my bookshelves from there with me.
- At my own apartment, get rid of clothes, books, trinkets I WILL NOT USE!
- Sell some stuff.
- Go down to the dreaded storage unit in our building and go through it.

Then of course we have to make real concrete decisions about how we are moving our stuff, where we are moving to and when we want to do this by. This opens up two whole doors, do we rent or buy? Do we throw our stuff into storage in our new town or move into a new place right away?

I also need to ascertain some new items before I begin the odyssey of graduate school

- A new laptop. I dropped mine (again) this morning. It still works for now.
- A real desk with drawers. My ikea desk isn’t making it happen for me anymore.
- Filing cabinets. Tall glorious filing cabinets.

Alas, I have to figure out my new methodology and practice as a graduate student. It’s been four years since I was in school last and A LOT has changed both in academia and with my personal life, skills and habits.

I MUST

- get a decent planner and stick to it. I currently use a hybrid of google calendar, personal calendar, two notebooks I carry with me and email to remind myself to do things, keep appointments and stay on top of tasks. This is one is very important.
- Figure out what kind of notebooks I like to use.
- Work on my note taking and my penmanship.
- Marking up texts. I use to love highlights but now I am more drawn to using mechanical pencils. I have more respect for the shape of a book but how long will this last when I have hundreds of pages due by tomorrow morning!

More lists and questions and hopefully answers to come!