Today’s song: “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Fall is a wonderful time of the year. The leaves are changing, falling, and awesome to crunch. The air is brisk and snowy, I really love pumpkin, and oh yes, people are hacking up nasty fluids. Unfortunately on a college campus, even if you are not in the dorms, sickness is passed around like popcorn at the movie theater.

About halfway…

About halfway through the semester, around the cursed time of midterms, when everyone and their mother is sick. And try as you might, you’ll probably contract some version of it. So what do you do? Well there’s the obvious of washing your hands every chance you get and downing EmergenC like water. There is also the extreme options of quarantining yourself, but think of the catch-up homework that would entail.

In college, getting laid out for days by a sickness isn’t possible. In some majors there is the possibility to catch up on lecture notes, but you’ll never get all the information unless you go to the class. In others, like English, they take attendance. And of course, tell you how many absences you get. For most attendance based classes you get a whole week of absences. Sounds great right? No what they mean is you get as many absences as you get days in that class. Meaning, your Tuesday Thursday classes, you get two absences for the entire semester.

Clearly sickness isn’t an option

When you get a whopping two absences over the entire 18 weeks of a semester, you never know when you’re really going to need them. So getting laid out for even a day can spell catastrophe to your grades. Sometimes, even when you’re feeling quite miserable and can’t even remember what it’s like to be healthy, you have to grin and bear it and go to class.

Writing papers is mostly second nature to me, and even so, it’s quite difficult to write one when I want to curl up in bed and never see the world again. Sometimes you’re lucky and you get sick after your midterms, but not always.

So my suggestion to you. Stay well. You all know the tips to getting better and preventing sickness. And even though EmergenC tastes like orange-flavored vomit, it does help in preventing.

Feel better my readers, and enjoy the fall.