It's a daunting experience moving from home to a room with pasty cinderblock walls. For a student stepping foot in an empty college dorm room with the first load of moving boxes, the absent warmth of collected household relics and familiar accents from afghans to wall clocks can suddenly feel like lost nirvana. If you're only a month or so away from your first campus move-in day, there are six steps you can take in order to prepare for a slight rebirth.

Step One: Make a plan, mentally and on paper. The key to minimizing that first horrible jolt of realization is to have an idea what the room looks like before you get there. Form a dorm room decorating plan, even if you're not usually a planner or decorator. (Why not make a dorm room renovation the starting line toward independent adulthood, which unfortunately requires planning and decorating from time to time.)

Start by researching your design canvas. If you can't take a tour and see the dorm rooms in person, check out the college's website. Many residence life departments maintain a landing page under the "for prospective students" heading, and often those pages offer virtual tours of the standard college dorm room. The images might not show an exact picture of your room, you'll still have an idea what kind of layout and environment you're working with.

Now that you've got that idea, lower your expectations slightly, just in case the room you enter on that first day has a major unforeseen flaw. Now that your expectations are slightly lower, feed yourself positive slogans and remember that your roosting skills will kick in - your new space just hasn't been properly claimed yet.

Step Two: Get some color in there, for the love of all things bright and cheerful. Nothing is worse than an all-white room, unless you're a celebrity with access to those special white paints that somehow seem fancier and more soothing than a snowy Aspen mountainside. Take everything out of its moving box, even if one side of the room starts to look like a Crate & Barrel exploded.

Step Three: Get something on the walls. Christen the room with a photograph of your family, your cat as a wee kitten, or a terrific group of friends. Note that some residence life programs strictly outlaw taping, tacking, or nailing posters to the dorm room walls. If you didn't receive summer mail outlining the rules, make some calls and look into it. You'd be surprised how protective of eggshell-colored concrete colleges can be. Removable wall decals are one solution. Quality chalkboard, whiteboard, and photo frame decal kits will last years and can be transferred from wall to wall and room to room without falling apart or damaging walls. If you can demonstrate that the paint is unscathed beneath the handy peel and stick chalkboard above your desk, you'll definitely pass your first room inspection.

Step Four: Get a fresh start by dusting and wiping off all surfaces. Cover the mattress with one of those fluffy hypoallergenic mattress pads. Sweep the floor. Heck, if you've got a sweet view of the football stadium or Fraternity Row's fascinating backyards, clean the windows. Your roommate will likely be impressed and you'll meet one another under cleaner circumstances.

Step Five: Start putting things where they go and gradually make the place yours. You'll have the freedom to decide next week that you don't like those books on the bookshelf after all.

Step Six: Keep a running list of all the little unexpected things you need. No one can anticipate needing a container to hold a massive highlighter collection. Imagine yourself as a day-to-day student - what will your life be like? Will you enjoy a nice floor cushion, or will you prefer to study in bed? Are there plenty of well-lit places in your room, or will you need a lamp or two to offset a fluorescent glow?

Once the foundation of you-ness has been sufficiently laid, take photos to compare to ones you should take on the day you move out. The nesting process is natural and will have revealed itself slowly through accumulated stubs from campus events, checked to-do lists, new room accessories, tons of school supplies only true grown-ups own, and that new well-traveled look to the things you brought from home.