Two sons, two campuses, 48 hours: How one Northeastern family conquered move-in
Sarah Pelletier’s sons, Braden and Gabriel, are Husky undergrads in Boston and Oakland, respectively. Getting them settled took meticulous planning, helpful staff and ‘a lot’ of caffeine.
When Sarah Pelletier joined Northeastern’s Advancement team in 2018, she imagined her two sons, then in elementary school, might one day become Huskies. She didn’t imagine they’d be enrolled on two different coasts.
But when her youngest son, Gabriel, was accepted to the Oakland campus for this freshman year, the senior associate director of leadership relations and her husband, Scott, joined the growing ranks of bicoastal Northeastern parents — and found themselves looking ahead to a cross-country move-in weekend.
“We all felt that both our boys would be successful here,” Pelletier says. “But I wasn’t expecting this.”
Braden, the Pelletiers’ eldest, is a second-year undergraduate on the Boston campus studying finance. He was scheduled to move into the West Village residence halls on a Thursday morning; Gabriel’s Oakland move-in was early the following Saturday.
The stage was set for a jam-packed weekend. But Pelletier — whose kids are 18 months and one grade level apart — is accustomed to major parenting milestones coming one on top of another.
“I don’t know any better,” she laughs.
Still, a lot had to go right. Returning to Boston after his own freshman year out west, Braden had one of the earliest slots of his move-in day, unloading the car around 8:30 a.m. After an hour of setting up furniture and decorations, Gabriel, Sarah and Scott said a quick goodbye and beelined back to their home in Ashland to repack for their evening flight to San Francisco. They arrived at their hotel around 2 a.m. Pacific time.
“Thursday was a really long day, but it was fun,” Sarah Pelletier says. “Move-in is always fun.”
The next day, fueled with “a lot of caffeine,” according to Pelletier, they set about getting their younger son settled. A consummate planner, Pelletier had pre-arranged pickups and shipments of everything Gabriel would need beyond what they could take on the plane. They grabbed orders of toiletries from Target and electronics from Best Buy; five Amazon boxes were delivered to the hotel. By Saturday morning, they were unloading on the leafy Oakland campus.
Thanks to staff and volunteers, “it was really smooth,” Pelletier says. “We pulled into campus at 9, and by 9:20 the car had already been unloaded. Anecdotally, a lot of parents were saying the same thing.”
For Gabriel Pelletier, the logistical seamlessness combined with his older brother’s past stint in Oakland made the transition to living away from home for the first time less daunting.
“He came and visited a couple of times,” Braden says of his younger sibling. “So he was able to get a good sense of the campus beforehand. I showed him around and tried to relay as much information as I could, like what to get at Café Suzie.”
Braden also encouraged Gabriel, as he did, to really use the year in Oakland to experience everything the West Coast has to offer.
“I’m from Massachusetts, so going to California was such a big change that I wanted to make the most of it,” he says. “I hiked Yosemite and visited San Diego and just tried to do as much as I could out there.”
Gabriel is planning to study engineering, and he will rejoin his family in Boston next year. But like Braden, he plans to squeeze as much as he can from his time in Oakland. “Since it’s mostly a first-year campus, there are a lot of openings to start a club or be a leader,” he notes. “You can make the most of those leadership opportunities.”
Once Gabriel was settled in, Scott Pelletier took a same-day red-eye back to Boston. Sarah flew back Sunday, came to work, and — though admittedly behind on sleep — volunteered for two move-in shifts on the Boston campus that Tuesday.
“I really enjoy helping out,” she says. “I see how grateful the parents are with [Northeastern’s handling] of the process, and if I can help answer their questions, they feel better about the whole thing. It’s a win-win.”