Classic closing-the-suitcase manouvreDaisy Hessenberger

Jonny Dillon on your packing priorities

Your first day at Cambridge; Daddy slowly pulls the car to a halt and you step out onto the cobblestones of the college you fell in love with on Open Day, anxious, excited, and laden with more luggage than a member of the Made In Chelsea cast returning from six weeks in St Bart’s. 

As you haul your six suitcases, four holdalls, Potter-esque trunk and pot-plant up the three flights of winding stairs to your new room,  you think to yourself: "Fuck. Why did I bring so much stuff? At least I haven’t forgotten anything. Right?" Wrong! Yes, Mummy dearest may have made a list, but I guarantee that there are things you will kick yourself for leaving at home, plus a lot of things you’ll wish you’d never brought.

To try and save you this annual fresher’s pain, I’ve compiled a list of commonly omitted items and some of the things you can do without:

Important Things to Bring:

1. Enough underwear: You’ve got a morning full of lectures, supervision over lunch and an essay due that evening; what you haven’t got is any clean pants or time to run back and forth every twenty minutes to put on another drying cycle.

2. Sufficiently warm knitwear: Cambridge gets cold! Sadly, pretty doesn’t come with double glazing.

3. Cheese: Cheese is almost as ridiculously priced as it is delicious. Have your parents pay while you still can.

Important Things to Leave:

1. Questionable art: The poster your aunt bought you of a random baby dressed as a sunflower. It was a nice thought, but do you really want to wake up with that hovering over you for the next eight weeks?

2. Your long-distance relationship: If you return with this after Christmas, kudos to you, but I’m not optimistic...

3. Unrealistic expectations: We all had them, but beginning your Cambridge career with an open mind and the knowledge that you can’t be perfect all the time means it will be even more fantastic than you could ever dare imagine. If you bring nothing else, bring that thought with you.

Kiera Summer on hand to save you from the most heinous of packing faux pas

The Onesie Dilemma

Please don’t bring a Onesie! It will never be appropriate. There may be moments where you naively think it advisable, but it is never a good idea to don a garment which, quite frankly, has been known to induce bouts of vomiting, or to, at least, suspiciously coincide with them. Follow this simple rule and avoid the inevitable identity crisis as the girl next to you in the library snorts as you take your seat in that Primark tiger costume you mistakenly thought was both edgy and comfortable.

Own Brand Alcohol

Beg, borrow and steal as much liquor as you can and smuggle it to Cambridge in your luggage. Seize the raffle merlot and forcibly obtain that gigantic whiskey no one has touched since Granddad passed out in the utility room last Christmas. Those things are ipso facto yours now that you have come of age, entered the snare of student debt, and willingly sold yourself into servitude for eight long weeks, where your drink of choice will be the slurred approximation of "what’s cheapest that isn’t Jaeger?"

A Novelty Duvet

Call me a snob, but I believe those who reach the ripe old age of eighteen deserve the most decadent bedding BHS has to offer. Remind the miserly parent who tries to bully you out of investing in a 70% down double-duvet that you are merely seeking to find some replacement for the warmth of the family bosom you are leaving. And when the collective family eyebrow is raised over a suspicion that you plan to share said bed, act appropriately outraged at the suggestion that you would use the possession of fine bedding as the most enticing chat-up line ever created. Then storm off to your room in a fit of appalled Austinian modesty. Do what you have to, but luxurious bed linen should be on your college shopping list, if only so that your new friends don’t think you’re crazy into dolphins.