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The things they had to bring: a well-hugged elephant, pickleball paddles, a baby blanket soft with holes and a tattoo in mom’s handwriting. 

More than 5,000 students moved to the University of Tampa this week ahead of the fall semester, which begins Monday.

Hailing from Orlando, Long Island, Charlotte and beyond, they carried what they needed to start class but brought what they loved to make campus a home. 

When she misses her dog, Sadie, Keira Flaherty, a first-year student from Ronkonkoma, New York, only has to look at her arm. Days before heading to Tampa, Flaherty, who plans to major in elementary education, got a small tattoo of a tiny paw print and “S” in two hearts on the inside of her arm. 

“She’s everywhere now,” she said of Sadie, a 5-year-old Maltipoo. 

Another family reminder is a tattoo Flaherty got with her sister, also a UTampa student, “Love yourself first,” in her mom’s handwriting, on her other arm.  

“It reminds me of her all the time,” she said. 

Flaherty’s roommate, Meghan Miller, is a childhood friend who brought her stuffed blue elephant, Ellie, to help her sleep.

“I literally cannot go to bed without that in my room,” said Miller, who plans to study psychology with an eye toward a criminal justice career. She decided to tour UTampa very last minute, she said, but loved it from the start.

“I wanted to be on a campus with a city, and I love the weather,” she said. 

Morgan Cavan, a first-year student from Charlotte, North Carolina, is starting campus life with a fresh college fit. 

Along with sentimental glasses from places she has traveled, including one from a trip to the Bahamas with her mom this summer, Cavan said she’s excited to meet new people and wear her new matching green skirt and top set. 

There are no horses on campus for Ivana Diaz, of Ponce, Puerto Rico, to ride, so for the next several months, framed photos on her desk of her horse, Bruce, will have to suffice. 

The first-year biology major is on a pre-veterinary track at UTampa and said she “really loved working with animals and helping people.” She’s excited to learn more leadership skills and be active in the campus community this year. 

Pickleball is big everywhere, and it’s a social staple for first-year student Marlee Hill, who brought her paddles to campus from Liniboro, Maryland, so she’s ready to play.

“It’s something I like to do with my friends back home, so I thought, ‘why not?’” she said.

Max Denny isn’t sure what exactly he’ll do with the two lime green Matchbox cars he hastily threw into his suitcase while packing his bedroom in California, but they’re now in his UTampa residence hall.

“They took up no space, so we will see,” said the entrepreneurship major. 

Though she’s not too far from where she grew up near Orlando, Ava Grant brought her pale pink baby blanket to make her UTampa room feel like home.

When she pulled it out on the car ride over, “I just bawled,” her mom said. 

“We’ve come full circle.”