Ah, it's great to be finally back in the States! I think that for most people, we can agree that there's nowhere better than home sweet home as my third grade teacher once said. Home cooked meals, family, an environment where cars drive on the correct side of the road, and people speaking the same kind of colloquial English as you do, what more can you ask for? Actually, a good amount, but I can gripe about those things on my own time. Besides, it wouldn't do you readers much use in terms of better understanding Cambridge and what life is like there. :)
So, moving out for vacation. Now, before I begin, let me point that this blogpost may not apply to everyone. Some colleges do allow you to keep your belongings in your room over the vacation, so make sure to check what the policy is for your college. The main reason why people have to move out of college for the Christmas vacation (you will get your room back during Lent term, do not worry!) is to vacate rooms for candidates interviewing for admission to Cambridge. Indeed, the application process to Cambridge is somewhat different from that in the United States. First of all, you can't apply to both Oxford and Cambridge. You can only apply to one of them, so by applying to Cambridge, these students are saying they do not want to go to Oxford (wise choice in my totally unbiased opinion of course). Also, you are not applying for general admission to the university. Rather, you are applying for admission to the college under a specified area of study, like engineering or maths (yes, people in the UK say "maths" and not "math"!). Thus, the students each college hosts are the ones the college is going to interview. These interviews take place over several days, and given that you are applying for admission under a particular area of study, they can be technical in nature, which is a far cry from interviews for admission to US colleges.
Well, at least you now know why you might have to vacate your room during Christmas vacation. Given that I am used to keeping all of my belongings in my room all year until the summer, having to move out before Christmas felt somewhat inconvenient. Remember, I'll have to do this two more times! Once more after Lent term, and once more once the school year is actually over. However, as an international student, colleges recognize that it can be more inconvenient to store your belongings since you are far away from home. Thus, they will most likely provide a variety of options in terms of places you can store your stuff. I will go through them now.
The first option to check is if you have storage in your room. My room has a little cupboard where I could store much of my smaller belongings. It is secured with one of the keys provided for my room, so I don't have to worry about some interview candidate snooping around (hopefully!). Not all rooms have this feature, so be sure to check yourself! If you don't see any such storage, double check with the housekeeping office in your college to make sure.
The second option to check is if your college has bunkers, large chests like the one pictured above. This is also personal storage like the cupboard, except with more space of course. In my case, I was able to rent one out for the year at no additional cost. My only responsibility is that I have to return the key to the bunker by the end of the school year. This place is great to store your large belongings/suitcases that you don't want to take home with you. However, word of warning: make sure you actually see if your larger items can fit in the bunker. It may have the volume, but the incorrect shape. Such was the case for me. The bunker shown above had enough space to store my larger items, but it was the wrong shape. What this picture doesn't show you is a large, wooden bar that separated the bunker from the wall of the building, making it extremely inconvenient for me to store my suitcases. For all intensive purposes, let's just say there was some ingenuity required to make them fit inside at the end.
The second warning regarding bunkers is that there are only a limited number of bunkers in college, and in my college, they are first come first serve, with the exception of a bunch that are allocated specifically for international students. Thus, inquire about them early, and if your college has them, reserve one as soon as possible. If you inquire too late about the bunkers, you may be assigned a bunker located in another building, or even worse, there will be no more bunkers to give out. I got extremely lucky, as I inquired about bunkers several weeks before the term was over (I was not aware of them until the week before). Miraculously, they had one left that was located in my building! Any later, and I would have been out of luck.
The third option to check is general college storage. In my college, there is a storage room dedicated to international students (no need to have storage for local students who live close enough to the college, since they should be able to bring their belongings back home). This is an option that colleges will certainly have. However, I did not find it to be the most optimal. First, it is a communal space, so your belongings may be damaged inadvertently by other students as they store their own belongings. Also, for the sake of protecting everyone's belongings, there most likely will only be specific times when you can store your stuff, which can be problematic if you are unable to store everything that you want to store at those designated times. In my case, I could only store my belongings in the storage room more than a week before I was scheduled to leave college. This option was essentially out of the question for me as a result. Thank goodness for the bunker!
The final option, which is outside of college, is to pay for storage at an external storage company. This really should be an option of last resort. I did not explore this option at all, but something tells me that it won't be cheap (economics indicates that bigger need --> higher price). It will most likely not be too close to college either. I didn't see any storage companies nearby college, but that might be different depending on the college. But nevertheless, I would definitely try to see if the first three options can fully satisfy your storage needs before resorting to this one.
Before I conclude, a brief word about what college means by "moving out." Now, it may vary from college to college, but here is what it means for mine. First, it means removing or storing all of your belongings that were in your room. It means emptying your trash receptacles and cleaning up any obvious messes (e.g. Coke spilled over the floor). It also means rearranging the furniture back to the way it was initially setup on arrival. If any of these specifications are not followed, you will be handed what they call detriment charges on your college bill because housekeeping staff will have to do the work you should have done before leaving. By the way, don't be too alarmed by that last specification. A floor plan should be provided in your room, or if not, just go talk to the housekeeping and see if they can give you a floor plan. In my case, the housekeeping staffwoman thought my new arrangement was better than the one they initially had (for some reason, they had put my closet next to the bedstand where the doors could not open)! Thus, I did not have to do any rearrangement.
Well, that's all I have to say about moving out before Christmas vacation! Now time for me to go back and enjoy it! For those of you intending to apply for CME (due date is January 14th!), look out for a post soon regarding application advice! Afterwards, I will be taking a break from blogging until I return to Cambridge in early January, when I will talk about moving back into my room and briefly discuss my Christmas vacation!