Dorm Room Must-Haves

August is upon us and that means it's almost time to get soon-to-be-college-freshmen all packed up and ready to live in an always-exciting college dorm room!

Most dorm rooms are "traditional style doubles," a euphemism for a single room with one small window, two small beds, a dresser, a desk, and if you are lucky, an actual built-in closet. Increasingly, dorm room layouts and amenities have become more diverse and exotic. Many colleges now offer one small refrigerator and sometimes a small sink in the actual room. Other colleges offer single rooms for just one student, single rooms for three students, or suite-style rooms for two to four students.

It's customary for incoming freshmen to contact their new roommate(s) before move in day to decide who will bring what so there is no duplication of efforts - otherwise known as two microwaves.

In addition to the givens - the computer, the clothes, the credit card - what else should a student bring on his or her first foray into independent living? Jill Feigelman, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Meaghan McGowan have their opinions on dorm room must-haves, but my top five must-haves for the Baltimore-bred college student are as follows:

5. Your Very Own Wall Paper: Make a statement with your choice of wall ornamentation. There is no better way to get a conversation going or to get others with similar interests interested in you than by adorning your wall with a poster, over-sized photo, or work of art that either means a lot to you or represents you in some way or another. Pick something uniquely you so that when others walk by your open door, they know they're in your neighborhood now. Proud of your Italian heritage? Bring an Italian flag. Love Chris Brown? Bring a poster of him. Sad you can't watch every Ravens home game on local TV? At least you can look at photo of yourself at the M&T Bank Stadium, while constantly clicking "Refresh" on espn.com's NFL Scores section.

4. Egg Crates: Your mattress at home will not be your mattress at college. In most cases, the college mattress will be as hard as getting an 800 on the Physics SAT Subject Test. Egg crates, or something like them, are the perfect antidote to the common college mattress (Note: make sure you confirm the size of your mattress with your college's residence life office because you want an egg crate to fit your bed, which applies to sheets too).

3. Flip Flops & Bathrobe: There is nothing less fun than having to shower where twenty or more fellow classmates have showered in the last two hours without proper protection for your feet! Also, with the advent of co-ed bathrooms and showers (memo to the genius administrators at a select cadre of "open-minded" colleges and universities: there is such a thing as getting too up close and personal with everyone on your hall and there is a limit to equal access for all!), it is extremely imperative that a bathrobe should remain close at hand at all times.

2. Digital Camera: Though you may think you will always remember this first plunge out of the grasp of parental control, you won't remember every detail, so try to chronicle as much of it as possible in pictures. Once the photos have been uploaded to Facebook, all of your high school friends can vicariously see what you have been up to and they will start posting photos too. This way, when you all visit each other, it will take much less time for your high school friends to catch up (Note: don't take photos of you and your new friends in compromising situations, after all, you want to complete your freshman year and eventually get a job too).

1. Berger Cookies: Should you feel homesick and have an urge to hop on a plane or jump on a train back to town, it's best to keep your dorm room stocked with Baltimore's best cookies, which are the unrivaled king of comfort foods. As an added plus, nobody on your hall will want to leave your room, so you won't want for friends looking for a Berger fix (Note: it may take out-of-towners some convincing to first sample Berger Cookies as they are quite mysterious treats to those outside the 410).