The memory hole, again
Jun. 15th, 2009 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyWell, I'm in New Jersey, once again, for the short time before I go up to Boston, then come back down here, and then eventually go out to Michigan... where I will presumably (no, I still haven't finalized housing) live somewhere where I won't be temporarily forced out 3 times a year.
Unfortunately, I really failed to account for something in this: I can't take arbitrarily much stuff home, or to Ann Arbor.
See, in past years, as I packed stuff up for the year, if I didn't have enough boxes? I found more! And every box I found during the year I kept. My first two years, the 5-box limit on storage wasn't enforced; when 3rd year I was surprised with the news that they weren't enforcing it, I managed to get Colin and Aviva to store my boxes in their apartments for me. (Including the infamous bad box, which Amelia later destroyed in her drunken rage, and later replaced.) Sure, it may have involved multiple trips, sometimes by hired van, sometimes by hand[0] - in one by hand in the rain with the box falling apart on us - or help from several other people, but I got it done, and from year to year, I kept all my stuff.
But when you're traveling by airplane and your family's car, well, there's a limit to how much you can take. I was sort of hoping that when I moved to, well, wherever, I would be able to be ready to go, right "out of the box", no need to get extra stuff there - as with REU second year - but that's not going to be the case. Stuff was going to have to go. And, after packing lots of things and giving to the house most of the rest, it was pretty clear: There wasn't room for my notes.
My accumulated notes, have, over the years, taken up increasing portions of my floor. This year it was like half (and oftentimes the other half would be taken up by dirty clothes). I never threw them out, because, hey, I might want to find stuff in there. There was no organization, save for the default semi-chronological one; not only unsorted but even unlabeled they were, just pieces of white printer paper filled with my scribblings. (And my literal scribblings, too.) And they had my notes on everything I'd done these past 4 years.
Now, of course I could have fit at least some good portion had I taken other stuff out; but because sorting through them would be hard, I saved them for last. And last, without having to unpack and get rid of lots of other things we decided to keep, there wasn't room.
Now a lot of it is in textbooks[3], or in online notes. But I really have little idea as to what was and what wasn't. And now it's all gone. If we're to go by the standard of "you can get rid of stuff you can buy again later", then aside from my computer the notes could quite possibly be the *only* thing I should have kept!
I'm sure this wasn't the best solution; I just don't know what a better one would have been (though perhaps it would have involved convincing other people to temporarily store stuff for me, and I could recover it from them later). I'm really hoping not to have to do this ever again.
-Harry
[0]Well, by dolly. By actual hand would probably be more difficult than I'd be willing to do.
[3]I mean, all of it is in textbooks *somewhere*, but you have some idea what I mean.
Unfortunately, I really failed to account for something in this: I can't take arbitrarily much stuff home, or to Ann Arbor.
See, in past years, as I packed stuff up for the year, if I didn't have enough boxes? I found more! And every box I found during the year I kept. My first two years, the 5-box limit on storage wasn't enforced; when 3rd year I was surprised with the news that they weren't enforcing it, I managed to get Colin and Aviva to store my boxes in their apartments for me. (Including the infamous bad box, which Amelia later destroyed in her drunken rage, and later replaced.) Sure, it may have involved multiple trips, sometimes by hired van, sometimes by hand[0] - in one by hand in the rain with the box falling apart on us - or help from several other people, but I got it done, and from year to year, I kept all my stuff.
But when you're traveling by airplane and your family's car, well, there's a limit to how much you can take. I was sort of hoping that when I moved to, well, wherever, I would be able to be ready to go, right "out of the box", no need to get extra stuff there - as with REU second year - but that's not going to be the case. Stuff was going to have to go. And, after packing lots of things and giving to the house most of the rest, it was pretty clear: There wasn't room for my notes.
My accumulated notes, have, over the years, taken up increasing portions of my floor. This year it was like half (and oftentimes the other half would be taken up by dirty clothes). I never threw them out, because, hey, I might want to find stuff in there. There was no organization, save for the default semi-chronological one; not only unsorted but even unlabeled they were, just pieces of white printer paper filled with my scribblings. (And my literal scribblings, too.) And they had my notes on everything I'd done these past 4 years.
Now, of course I could have fit at least some good portion had I taken other stuff out; but because sorting through them would be hard, I saved them for last. And last, without having to unpack and get rid of lots of other things we decided to keep, there wasn't room.
Now a lot of it is in textbooks[3], or in online notes. But I really have little idea as to what was and what wasn't. And now it's all gone. If we're to go by the standard of "you can get rid of stuff you can buy again later", then aside from my computer the notes could quite possibly be the *only* thing I should have kept!
I'm sure this wasn't the best solution; I just don't know what a better one would have been (though perhaps it would have involved convincing other people to temporarily store stuff for me, and I could recover it from them later). I'm really hoping not to have to do this ever again.
-Harry
[0]Well, by dolly. By actual hand would probably be more difficult than I'd be willing to do.
[3]I mean, all of it is in textbooks *somewhere*, but you have some idea what I mean.
