6 Essential Items Every College Student Needs on Their Holiday Wish List

Is your wish list ready for the gifting season?

Well, it’s offi­cial­ly the hol­i­day sea­son with Pep­per­mint Mocha Lat­te offered in every café, hol­i­day dec­o­ra­tions in every store and, even though we haven’t even made it through Thanks­giv­ing yet, hol­i­day music play­ing soft­ly in your favorite cof­fee shop.

This is also around the time that col­lege stu­dents are metic­u­lous­ly count­ing down the days until finals are over and they can final­ly go home and get some seri­ous rest, have a home-cooked meal, sleep in a bed that doesn’t feel like rocks, see their friends from high school and more impor­tant­ly, give and receive some gifts.

The hol­i­days are a time for giv­ing and col­lege stu­dents love this sea­son more than any­one else because, well, they’re broke. When you’re younger, you can’t wait for the hol­i­days because you get time off of school to be with your loved ones, eat a great hol­i­day meal of your family’s choos­ing and get lots and lots of gifts. It’s the same when you’re in col­lege, but the dif­fer­ence is that every col­lege stu­dent is too broke to buy them­selves any­thing, so the hol­i­days turn into a time to get all of the neces­si­ties (with­out actu­al­ly pay­ing for them).

Need some new clothes that haven’t been stained by a beer show­er from a frat par­ty? Put it in on your wish list. Need a new lap­top after you spilled some ramen on yours? Wish list. Need some extra snacks to stash in your clos­et after devour­ing all of your sup­plies a week into school? Def­i­nite­ly put Pud­ding Snacks and Gold­fish on your wish list.

You prob­a­bly have already thought through your wish list for the hol­i­day sea­son, but if you haven’t and your par­ents are pres­sur­ing you to write it all down or you just want some more ideas, here are six essen­tial items that every col­lege stu­dent needs on their wish list this hol­i­day season.

1. A gift card to your favorite cof­fee shop

I’m sure the cof­fee that they have at your schools din­ing hall is pret­ty good, maybe a sol­id four on a scale of one to ten? But let’s be hon­est, you are always crav­ing your favorite lat­te, mac­chi­a­to or spe­cial iced cof­fee that Dunkin Donuts or Star­bucks makes. A gift card is always a prac­ti­cal item on any wish list and a card to your favorite cof­fee shop will come in handy when you need a pick-me-up dur­ing those long nights study­ing in the library.

2. A heavy-duty case for all of your tech gadgets

Every­body nowa­days has a case for all of their tech gad­gets; they would be basi­cal­ly naked with­out them. How­ev­er, when you’re in col­lege, you need a case that can with­stand a lot of dam­age. Let’s say while you’re try­ing to take a cute self­ie at a par­ty, some­one drunk­en­ly bumps into you and your phone drops. Or, you fall asleep after watch­ing Net­flix until  2 a.m. and your lap­top falls off your bed. Any­thing can hap­pen at col­lege and you have to pre­pare your expen­sive tech gad­gets. A good case that is going to last through all of the unex­pect­ed things that hap­pen in col­lege is def­i­nite­ly a necessity.

3. Mon­ey for textbooks

It’s no secret that text­books can get very expen­sive. Nobody knows exact­ly why it costs around $100 for a biol­o­gy text­book that you’ll use for one semes­ter, but you’re going to need that over­priced book. So, hav­ing some extra cash to help pay for your books next semes­ter will help a lot. Or, you can opt to ask for a gift card to your school’s book­store that you can use on books or any oth­er school sup­plies that you may need.

4. New shoes

You might not think putting new shoes on your wish list is a must, but it is. When you went back-to-school shop­ping, you prob­a­bly already bought some new shoes to go along with that new top or pair of pants. But over the semes­ter, they have prob­a­bly seen some hor­rif­ic scenes and have got­ten beat­en up pret­ty bad­ly. From the dirty, mud filled tail­gates to the rainy days on cam­pus when you’ve had to run to shel­ter, they have seen some ups and down, and they’ve prob­a­bly even had a few alco­holic bev­er­ages spilled on them at a par­ty. If any of these things have hap­pened to your shoes, you prob­a­bly need a new pair or two depend­ing on how rough your semes­ter was, so you are def­i­nite­ly going to want to put new shoes on your wish list.

5. Noise-can­celling headphones

Noise-can­celling head­phones are a neces­si­ty in col­lege where you rarely have a moment of com­plete silence either to study or just to get lost in your own head. With noise-can­celling head­phones, you can lis­ten to music and drown out the noise around you. You can just put them on while study­ing or writ­ing a paper so that you can real­ly focus on your work. They are per­fect in the gym, the library or your dorm room when your room­mate has friends over.

6. Polaroid camera