As a student, you need to know two things:
- People will borrow things from your kit and never bring them back.
- People will straight-up steal things from your kit.
They mean well, and it's not like they're hoarding your stuff: they take your tape, and they use your tape, and they put your tape down, and they don't think to return it. (Or the pen goes into their pocket. Or the stapler gets handed off to someone else who needs to staple stuff. etc. etc. etc.) It's being used on the show, it's sort of an investment in being a student in this sort of program, and you'll probably find other people willing to give in kind. (Someone walked off with your stapler? Borrow a friend's.)
What does all this mean? My advice:
1) Don't pack anything of any emotional significance in your kit. If you'd feel bad losing it, keep it out.
2) Don't pack anything expensive in your kit. If you have a taste for fancy pens, for example, those need to stay in your pockets. Keep a box of cheap ballpoints in the kit: those are the ones that get lent out. (Read: the ones which disappear.)
3) If something keeps getting stolen from you, stop carrying it.
Do not become known as The Student Who Always Has Pencils. (A stapler, pens, etc.) Help out in genuine emergencies, don't become everyone's go-to option for free stuff.
4) Do regular inventory. Weekly should be often enough. The worst time to discover you've run out of something is right when you need to use it.
5) Keep an eye on it. Unless it's in a locker, behind a locked door or within your line of sight, someone might be plundering your staples as we speak.
"Plundering your staples" may seem a colourful term of phrase, but sometimes it really did feel like I was a grizzled old cop from a 1970s TV serial. ("I've seen a brand-new toolbox, fresh from Home Depot, emptied of all its elastic bands within twenty seconds. They're like vultures, and they don't leave until you're all out of post-its. Don't tell me what it's like on the streets: I
know.")
- My personal headset for when they have the giant scary ones that kill your ears.
See, I carry a big giant scary one in my kit, for when they want me to use those piddly featherweight clip-ons that always give me migraines.