No matter how much hand sanitizer you use or how much sleep you get or how careful you are, it's bound to happen. You're going to get sick. In fact, everyone in your hall will get sick. Here are eight things everyone will understand after having their first college sick day...

1. Every disease is worse in college

Everyone knows what it’s like to get sick in high school. Maybe you miss a couple days or visit the school nurse. Worst case scenario: You catch a few blissful hours of sleep during class. But in college, you have to get up to walk half a mile in the dreary, misty mornings just to get to Psych. And then you have to walk back. Not to mention having to work up the energy to make it to the dining halls.

2. Nobody Cares...

This is the time to thank mom and dad. Whether they were the type to stay home with you and feed you soup or if they were more like mine and made you get up to go handle your business when you’re sick in college, you’ll be wishing they were there to listen to you complain about your aches and chills and whatnot. Your friends and hall-mates may listen, but after a couple minutes, almost everyone will lose interest….

3. ...Except for that one person

Except for your close friends. If you don’t know who your close friends are now, you will when you get sick. They’re the ones who reply to your snapchat story of you taking a “sick day” with a thousand hearts and a promise to pick you up soup. If they actually bring you the soup, be sure to keep them close.

4. Rite-Aid is really, really far

On any normal day, the drugstore is a short, sometimes inconvenient walk. But when you’re sick, it seems miles and miles away. When I got sick for the first time, I couldn’t even force myself out of bed to get cough drops. But, if you can manage to pull yourself out of bed and wrap yourself in blankets to make it down to your local rite-aid, good for you. You’re stronger than I was.

5. Food is the key to survival

When you’re sick, you’ll think of everything you wish you’d kept in your dorm. You’ll wish you had breakfast food, snacks, cough drops, etc. And then you’ll be healthy again and will literally forget everything on your list until the next time you’re stuck in bed.

5. You actually want to go to class

In high school, classes sucked. Most people I talked to pretty much prayed to be sick just so they could stay home and not have to endure the torture of listening to people talk at you for seven hours. In college, it won’t be your parents trying to encourage you to go to school, it’ll be you. You’ll do everything it takes to force yourself out of your dorm even if it means going to class in your pajamas and fuzzy socks.

5. Everyone is perpetually sick

I noticed this after I finally got over that killer cold that seemed to hit everyone during the first week. When you’re healthy again, you’ll become borderline paranoid. You’ll notice every sneeze and cough and eventually realize that everyone is always sick. There’s never a day where everyone you meet is healthy.

6. You never want to be sick again

Before getting a cold, hand sanitizer machines barely registered on my radar. Now, they’re my life preservers. I use everyone I see, I keep some in my backpack, in my purse, in my room. Every time someone says “something is going around”, I practically run back to my dorm to wipe everything down with Clorox. Never again.