 Lots of guys, Josh we're back here with another video, today's video is something that was highly requested and the topic is what should you bring to college because I know a lot of you guys are heading off to college in a couple weeks so I thought I would inform you on all the essentials that you're going to need for your first year at college. It's a blast but if you don't have the right materials you know, what are you going to do? I mean this is going to be your first time at college and you're heading off in a couple weeks and I thought I would inform you of the must haves for your first year since now I'm a I'm a seasoned veteran. For those of you that don't know my name is Josh because I'm a rising sophomore at Yale University studying electrical engineering and computer science. My channel mainly consists of college vlogs, sit down videos like this, student interviews, I've done some college application stuff in the past, really anything you guys want. I'm really just trying to share my life and grow as a person and this is a great way to do it. If you're down for that, definitely subscribe, more great content coming soon. I really enjoy it up there at Yale. It's a lot of work but it's a ton of fun, way, way too much fun. So obviously I'm not going to go over every single thing that you need to buy for your college dorm room. That's not what this video is about. Rather I'm going to focus on the essentials. Things that aren't immediately obvious or maybe you've forgotten about but will make your freshman year a lot easier. Let's get into it. First of which is bedding. I personally recommend going out and buying your own bedding. I made the mistake of ordering mine through Yale and when I got there it was just, you know, not very good quality, super cheap. Looking back on it, don't know why I did that. Bedding really doesn't matter. Do whatever will fit on your bed and whatever you like and whatever you're comfortable with. The main problem I have with college beds is the mattresses. They're all these standard like blue mattresses. Super uncomfortable, not the best thing to sleep on so I highly recommend investing in a nice memory foam like pad. You can lay on top. You can get them for like 20 or 30 bucks from Bed Bath and Beyond and they are a phenomenal investment. Is this bed? At least for me freshman year, my bed was my happy place. It was the one place where I could just go and just pass out immediately because as you guys know you're probably not going to get a lot of sleep during college. So you want something that's very comfortable when you can just come back from a late night of studying from the library and just plop down on and instantly fall asleep. And the memory foam pad is in my opinion the best way to do that. Good investment. That's the first thing on my list that you're probably forgetting. Definitely buy one as soon as possible. It will greatly improve your sleep experience. Next is something that's also very important. I don't have it with me right now. I'm not at my house. I don't have all my college stuff. I'm up at my grandparents house in Michigan right now. But the next thing I'll throw up a picture is a shower caddy. It looks like this. Basically at most schools your bathroom will not be in your room. Maybe you're in a suite and you have a bathroom in your room but most of the time you're going to be walking down the hall or walking across the hall and you're going to be sharing a bathroom with other rooms or other suites. So a shower caddy is absolutely necessary. Basically you load up all your toiletries, all your stuff in it. It has a bunch of pockets, a bunch of places to put stuff and then you just carry that to and from the shower. A lot of times they're waterproof. You don't have to worry about them like getting water everywhere filling up or getting wet. You can just bring it there. Take all your stuff out. Use whatever you need. Put it back and then bring it back to your dorm room. It's an easy way to transport all your toiletries. Highly recommend. It's better than just like lugging a handful of like shampoo and like razors and stuff to the bathroom and back. It's just, this is the way to go. The next thing on my list doesn't necessarily have to be physical but I recommend keeping some sort of planner or agenda. Me personally, like most Yale students, fall into the stereotype of using a Google Calendar decal. Basically I will load all of my classes, all of my meetings, all of my everything that is important into my GCal, the exact time it's happening, the location. So I get a notification on my phone. It syncs with my computer. Super easy to lay out everything I need for the day. Also, it's super easy to just add events. That's why everyone uses it. Oftentimes when you get asked for like your availability for meetings or stuff or clubs, you'll just send people your GCal and they will try to find a time that works for you. Also, I mean, you don't have to use GCal if you're old fashioned and want to get like a agenda book. Feel free to. A lot of people do use those too. You can take quick notes in it and you don't want to be whipping out your laptop or your phone every time to just add something to your calendar when you just write it down too. So that works. But just have some method of keeping track of all your events. Because like I said, college is a lot more spread out. You have a lot more free time, but you also have a lot more meetings and events and stuff that you have to do in those free time. And you're really going to have to start managing your time well. And a GCal or like a handwritten planner is the best way to do that. So great investment. Highly recommend. The next thing you probably already have, but it's a good water bottle. You probably won't have access to water in your room. So water bottle is very important. You can go fill it up and take it back to your room to stay hydrated. Staying hydrated in college is a lot harder than it looks. It's not like, I mean, you're not at your house. You can't just walk to the kitchen sink, fill it up. You don't have access to like water bottles in your fridge or anything. You really have to kind of make an effort to stay hydrated in college or something, which is something I wasn't really expecting. But a big, nice water bottle, maybe something that's insulated will make it a lot easier on you. Also, I know friends that do this, they buy like a pitcher or some bigger water container that they can go down, fill up with the water fountain. Like my water fountain was literally four stories down in the basement and then four stories back up if I wanted to go get water. So it was not the most efficient thing. So we just had like a giant pitcher that we would go down, fill up. That would last us a day or two. And it's a lot easier rather than just going back and forth from the water fountain every time you need water. Stay hydrated kids. It's very important. My number one attribute is hydration, actually. Me as a CS major and me as a YouTuber making these videos, I spend a lot of time on my computer working, whether that's coding projects, P sets or video edits in Premiere. So something that's really important for me is a big monitors. And so what I'll have in my dorm room is I have a little docking station with a lightning cable that runs into my laptop and an HDMI that runs into a big, way too big, ridiculously big 32 inch monitor that I found online for like 100 bucks. So what I do is I, as soon as I get in my dorm room, plop down in my chair, plug in the lightning cable to my laptop and then my laptop is immediately routed to the monitor so I can just see everything there. I have a keyboard and a mouse just that stays in my room. So whenever I need my laptop, I can bring it out and I have a nice portable computer. But whenever I get home, plug it in, nice big screen, nice keyboard, mouse, so I can do all my work. This makes it a lot easier and quicker when it comes to edits or CSP sets when you have a nice big keyboard and mouse and something that's comfortable to use. Also, your big monitor can double as a TV. I know at Yale, we get free access to like online TV. We don't have to worry about cable or anything. So that's great when you want to watch a baseball game or something like that. Great dual purpose thing. Doesn't take up a lot of space. Highly recommend. Next thing is also very important. A lot of times you'll have a desk. I think most of the time in college, you'll be provided a desk in your room with a chair. These chairs suck. These chairs really suck, especially at Yale. There's been a lot of memes and stuff made about the chairs because they're like rocking chairs, but they're like half rocking chairs. Or if you fall back, there's like a little thing and it feels like you're literally about to fall back and hit the ground, but it's really just a notch in the rocking chair and then you get stuck there and you're like, it's super annoying. Everyone hates them. So I recommend buying your own office chair or getting an office chair. I think my dad had a couple of office chairs left over from his office that we're able to bring up there. So now I have a nice comfy office chair that can roll around, spin. I do a lot of work in my room sitting at my desk, so having a nice office chair is very important. And you don't want to spend the whole year sitting in an uncomfortable wooden rocking chair that feels like you're gonna fall over every five seconds. So definitely invest in a good chair because especially if you're gonna spend a lot of time in it like I do. All right, we got two more things on my list. One of which is a rug. This is something that I didn't really think about. It's not something that immediately comes to mind when you're thinking about dorm room decoration. But I had like old wooden floors. Like a lot of the residential colleges at Yale are like over 100 years old. So I had these old crusty wooden floors and the floor of my suite. And they get cold in the winter and just wasn't a good look. So we wanted to cover those up with a, we had got a nice big floor rug that goes right below our bed. So every time I would jump off in the mornings when I had to wake up early for ROTC or something, just plop out of bed. My feet would land on a nice soft cushy rug. It was great, great investment. Also, when it's hot in the fall or the spring and there's no AC, you turn on a fan, you just lay, sprawl out in the carpet. Great place. Great thing to do, great investment. You don't think about it, but you will regret it if you don't get yourself a nice big comfortable floor rug. Especially when you're like in the middle of studying and you're just frustrated, you just want to collapse and cry somewhere. Great rugs, great place to do that. All right, the final thing on my list is a power strip because a lot of times you'll probably only have like one or two outlets in your actual room. I'm guessing you have a lot more things to plug in than just one or two things. I highly recommend investing in a long power strip that has a lot of plugs for you to plug in, whether it's laptops, docking stations, iPhone charging cords. Definitely bring more than one iPhone charging cord to college because you're bound to lose one. They break so easily. Definitely have a lot. I have one that I keep in my backpack and I think I have two in my room for charging, one right by my bed and then one at my desk. Power strips make things a lot easier. With power strips, you use extension cords. Honestly, you only have access to one or two outlets, so if you just have a giant bundle of cords running into cords, running into cords, that's probably how it's going to end up, so get used to it. Power strips, very, very important. And with that, I think I covered all the essentials, the essentials that are most often forgotten about when it comes into moving into college, freshman year. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope it was helpful. I've seen a lot of these types of videos online and they're not the best. They don't name the best things that you need. I hope this video helped a lot. I spent a lot of time researching. Thank you back to freshman year. Like, what did I need? What was essential? So, I hope this helped. If it did, drop a thumbs up down below. It helps me and supports the channel a lot more than you think. If you have any questions, comments, concerns about me, going to college, Yale, I don't know, drop them down in the comments section below. I will try to answer them. Also, any future video ideas, I have a lot more time to film right now, so drop those below. Also, hit your news, subscribe, and don't regret it. And with that, I'll see you guys in the next video.