"Move 'Em In, Move "Em Out, Move "Em Back In Again"

Here in the City Of Brotherly Love we have just completed college move in days. I feel this is a very special series of events for which tickets could be sold to visiting tourists (Penn will be the first no doubt). The act of moving offspring into a large urban campus is not at all the same as what takes place in bucolic country side settings. That's what makes it so much fun to observe.
Here we have, almost cheek by jowl, the University of Pennsylvania (undergrad enrollment eleventy billion), Drexel University (undergrad enrollment one huge number) and just up the road a piece, Temple University (undergrad enrollment unlimited).

While the upper class men and women know some ropes and scam ways to get in early (mainly to get the hell away from their families), the incoming frosh and their attendees are clueless, and must be herded like sheep to well organized destinations. Upon arrival many discover for the first time that dorm rooms are not the palatial facilities they have at home. The families with big SUVs with U-Haul trailers (mostly from southern states I have noted) must quickly decide what of their kid's crap will stay and what will have to go back home. These are wonderful transactions to watch, especially when the kid's folks brought the family dog along (who right there and then must take a crap). They do this quickly because a campus or city cop will soon help them along with the comforting phrase "you gotta move your vehicle sir."

It is not only a clash of cultures, but a grand lesson in applied physics as well.
Once the kid's stuff is dumped, lots of folks, especially alumni, feel the need to trek about the campus, getting lost trying to find old haunts like Penn's Smokey Joes, with the kid in tow and the dog trailing the exuberant parent. The kid just wants all these assholes to leave so he or she can meet members of the opposite sex and explore the temptations of the big city. Lots of smiles at the front end and a scowl at the end.
Truly a glorious day. A great place to observe this in Philly if you ever happen by at the right time is the Starbucks at 34th and Walnut, right near the frosh dorm at Penn with the smallest rooms the city building code will allow.
There is another side to this ritual - what to do with the mountains of crap departing seniors leave behind? Like a digestive system, large universities (small one too I am sure) must excrete tons of stuff each year. No matter what their parents or they may have spent to get it, most of the kids' stuff does not go home. At Penn they load it into the ice skating rink and open it to the public to sell the junk by silent auction. Viewed from above this activity resembles a colony of ants with steady columns of worker ants leaving the colony with stuff in their arms. And trying to fit refrigerators in trunks of cars. Another lesson in applied physics.