Do you wake up feeling sad about the fact that you are in college, possibly living entirely off of your parents’ money, and occasionally feel as though you could count the number of friends you have on one hand? If you cut off a couple fingers? Adolescents and young adults are among the loneliest people, so it’s not entirely surprising if you find yourself feeling a little blue every now and then.
It is with great enthusiasm, therefore, that I present you with this lovely list to remind you that not all hope is lost, that happiness is not simply an illusion, and that there really is good in the world.
1. Free food.
There are fewer things in life more beautiful than not needing to wrestle with a bundle of cash, or whip out a credit card, in order to receive food. Extra points if it’s good quality because honestly, a free no-name hotdog just doesn’t have the same appeal as, say, a free croissant or an assortment of fine cheese and charcuterie. Just saying.
2. Free anything, really.
Don’t you feel supremely pleased with yourself when, upon arriving at a hotel, you find that their shampoo and conditioner belong to Crabtree & Evelyn? Then, common sense dictates that you rush out of your room to shamelessly raid the maid’s cart, where all the goodies are. (No one is judging if you take some miniature tubes of toothpaste, too.)
3. Hot tea when you’re sick (on that note, hot soup also).
I mean, being sick is pretty terrible (hello, you’re so tired but can’t fall asleep because you can’t, you know, breathe), but then your friends can make you hot tea with honey, and feed you soup or rice porridge, and everything seems right in the world. Except for the breathing part, where you lie in bed for hours cursing all the times you could breathe normally and took it completely for granted. That should actually be included in Dante’s rings of hell.
4. Turning on the air conditioning so you can bundle up in blankets like a burrito.
Isn’t that the best part of fall? Where you can feel cold, on purpose, in order to happily stop being a potato (temporarily) in order to become burrito. It’s evolution, plain and simple.
5. The first fall sweater – extra big and extra comfy.
Heavy, thick, and warm, hopefully with no synthetic fibers, and perfect for pretty much anything that requires clothes. Except maybe running a marathon. I think I’d rather wear the sweater. Preferably while eating Shake Shack’s cheddar fries?
6. Closing all the tabs on your computer after a huge project.
Ohhh yes, all college students have been here. There are enough tabs to give any half-sane individual anxiety, but once you finish the last sentence (a killer conclusion to a stellar paper, obviously) and type up your Works Cited (what’s MLA format again?), those tabs are going to disappear from your life. Hopefully forever. And a tumultuous, chaotic burden has suddenly been lifted from your poor, overworked and overly-hunched shoulders.
7. Eating a taco without everything falling out.
So underrated, but so satisfying. Whether you eat your tacos hard or soft-shelled, more often than not the entire thing implodes before you’re halfway through. You are left with a pile of limp, shredded lettuce, some leaky-looking tomatoes, some sketchy meat product, and a few blobs of generic cheese (hello, colorations of red 41 and yellow 27), all precariously balanced within the war-torn remnants of a wheat or corn wrapper. Yum.
8. Going to bed on time (for once).
How often does this happen? When is the last time you went to bed at the time you actually wanted to go to bed? Can you even remember it? Yeah. Me neither.
9. Two great songs on the radio (in a row).
Does anyone even listen to the radio anymore? In complete seriousness, however, having two songs come on, back-to-back, that are so indescribably amazing but different in all the best possible ways, is almost unheard of. But when it does happen…life is good.
10. When your key card lets you in on the first try.
You’re basically a superhero. Let your awesomeness live on in legend, my friend.
