• the217
• Life
• Editor's Note

Moving sucks. Right now I am in the middle of wading through my belongings, attempting to pack up my life and move it to a new address where it will live for the next calendar year. Although I am moving just a block away from my current apartment, this new location will be the backdrop for life’s unexpected plot twists.

Champaign-Urbana is a particularly nomadic place to live. George Carlin once said that life is a series of dogs. But in CU life is a series of apartments. Basically everyone I know under the age of 30 will be packing up their lives and moving to another pad in the next couple weeks. Not only does this time of signify the end of a lease, it’s the end of an era.

In this time you have probably grown to hate your roommates a little more than you did before. You’ve thrown parties, lost socks, and put lots of dings and holes in the walls of your rented dwelling place. As you sort through the accumulated clutter, you’re throwing away old concert tickets, beer cans, and old flip-flops — tangible evidence of intangible memories.

During this two-week period there is a lot going on. You might be homeless in the layover time between leases. For four days I will be re-living high school as I move back in with my parents and eat their groceries. Sweet, free furniture can be found on street corners. Dumpster divers, determined to turn your trash into their treasure, are out in full force. Landlords everywhere are screwing people out of their deposit money. Oh, the drama.

Don’t let all this manual labor and uncertainty get you down. The dust will settle and life will fall back into the same dull routine. Before summer ends, check out our Summer Checklist (pg. 20) to make sure your make the most of things before life gets busy. So use this time to get organized, and get excited about the year to come.