Ah January, the Monday of months in the Northern hemisphere. Each year, when winter rolls around again, I've somehow managed to forget how cold winter actually is. Especially, you know, when you're a college student on an icy campus in central Pennsylvania and your main mode of transportation is your own two feet.
So, you have to go outside. Unfortunately, campuses up and down the country have not yet developed the underground system of tunnels linking buildings together (a suggestion I have been aggressively pushing since freshman year), so we, as students, are forced to find other ways to deal with the woes of winter weather. So, since you have to deal with the weather, what can you expect from it?
1. A casual walk across the quad becomes a death trap of icy slip ups, and hills become something you just avoid entirely
2. That being said, as karma dictates, if someone falls in front of you and you laugh at them, you too will fall on a previously unseen pack of ice.
3. If you want to drive anywhere, make sure you start your car thirty minutes early, because you forgot your ice pick at home so you just have defrost.
4. LL Bean boots get backordered as the influx of freshman girls on campus realize they are a must have on a college campus.
5. Timberland has the same effect on freshmen boys.
6. Getting up and going to class becomes ten times harder when the weather says it's 20 degrees out (feels like 10!).
7. Everyone looks like they are crying as soon as the enter a building because of the wind.
8. Going out becomes that much more difficult, because the night brings more cold, and your bed just seems so much warmer.
9. That being said, make sure you have a Fracket (frat+jacket) a term born on college campuses to describe a crap coat you wear to parties that you aren't attached to.
10. Because believe me, drunk people will steal your Fracket, and drunk you will steal someone else's Fracket. This will lead to a Fracket roulette, and eventually on one special day, you might find your old Fracket in a pile by the door.
11. Takeout because a much more enticing option than trudging through the snow to get to the school cafeteria.
12. Your gym attire - leggings, sweatpants, shirt, sweatshirt, coat, hat, gloves - mostly just so you can get there and halfheartedly bike for 30 minutes.
13. Try not to cry the first time you leave your dorm with wet hair and it freezes on contact - your tears will only provide more opportunities for frozen water on your body.
14. The first time you check the temperature, see that it says 36 degrees, and say out loud "Oh wow it's supposed to be really warm today" you'll surprise yourself before shedding a single tear.
15. The rare day that it is slightly above 40 causes the entire campus to bug out - girls pull out the sun dresses, guys dawn their chubbies, people throw parties during the day - no one realizes that there is still snow on the ground.
16. Give up on being tan - you are pale, like the rest of us, there is no such thing as the sun anymore, you're not fooling anyone.
17. Fingerless gloves - while you may find them fashionable, have relatively no function and make you look like you are homeless.
18. New ways of drinking are invented to prevent freezing outside - Kahlua in coffee, peppermint schnapps in hot chocolate, Fireball in apple cider - it occurs to no one that drinking inside might make more sense.
19. Inexplicably, everyone owns a Bruins jersey
20. Look at the bright side! Winter can't last forever right?
Right???
