Find an outlet

Finding an outlet for your energy or frustration or even just a hobby will make college much more fun. Last semester I had 22 hours of school per week... that's not a lot. This semester I only have 19 which obviously is even less. With all that free time and virtually nothing to fill it with most of the time, the exception being exam time. I found out that I love a clean kitchen and I love to cook and bake. I admit that most of my time is spent on social media and a lot of that time on social media is spent on Pinterest. I love looking up recipes for everything, dinner, desserts, and breakfast too. I just love finding the creative things that people make and I want to try them out myself. I've found that I particularly enjoy decorating cakes and cupcakes because I love to draw and piping designs is so much fun. Penne with home made alfredo sauce is one of my favourite recipes to make and I usually make it once a week to once every two weeks, I'll get around to posting the recipe soon.
I think that finding an outlet should be a main priority because otherwise you'll get bored and lazy and mess up your sleep schedule and you'll probably end up on the internet for 8 hours a day. This outlet can be anything! At Fleming you get a full membership to the Wellness Center (Gym) that is only a 5 minute walk away. Joining a gym will help keep off the freshman 15 and keep you healthy and active. Baking or cooking is a life skill so that's a great one to take up but drawing or painting, volunteering, running, knitting, swimming, music, or even blogging (and I don't mean tumblr) are great things to invest your time in! These activities keep your mind and/or body active which will lead to you being healthier!
Go out and find what you're passionate about and what you love to do!

Being Sick at College

Honestly the best way to survive being sick at college is just to not get sick at all but in all reality you will get sick. Especially if you live in residence. In our buildings (I can't speak for any other colleges) there are 6 roommates per suite, 4 suites per floor and 4 floors per building. So if every room was full there would be 96 students in each building. I can't actually say with 100% certainty that there are 96 rooms because I've heard that there are only 2 suites, plus the SRA suite, on the first floor. This would mean that there is only 13 people living on the first floor plus the 72 people from the other floors. But back to the point, all of these people touch at least one door that you do, with the majority touching 2, the outside door into the building and the door to the staircase. Not to mention the hand rails in the stair well, and anything in the school that a thousand other people have touched. Schools are the perfect breeding ground for sicknesses because as soon as one person gets it half the people you know have it too.
The thing with getting sick in college is that you don't have mom or dad there to take care of you, maybe you have a really nice roommate but it's just not the same. Without mom or dad there you don't have someone at your immediate disposal to tell you what to do to make you feel better like my mum always did. The best thing to do would be to call mum because a lot of kids I know would just take a bunch of meds they found their parents had packed into their bag. Since they don't know any better this could lead to complications of overdoses or at least make them feel worse than they did before they took them. As parents it would be a good idea to talk with your kids about what to take and when to take it, if you can take it at the same time as other meds and just other general questions they might have. I know that's far from reality because a lot of kids think they won't need that knowledge and are too psyched to be moving out so it would be hard for them to listen. Its not the worst though if you don't educate them because there is a million ways they can contact you or they can ask someone in their building and in the worst situation (or maybe the best?) they can ask google. Google knows just about everything....
When you're packing up to go to college make sure you have a basic medical kit and some common medications like acetaminophen, ibuprofen, some cough drops, Benylin or Robitussen or your chosen brand of cough syrup, Gravol and maybe even Immodium (better to be safe than sorry!). Last semester when I got sick my first time away from home I knew it was coming 'cause everyone around me was getting sick. It came at a great time since my mum was already packing me a care package so I begged her to throw cold meds in with it. Turns out I didn't have to beg, I just had to tell her what I wanted and say please.
Now with my second college sickness upon me I'm hoping it gets over with quickly so that I don't fall behind.

1. My first tip would definitely be to sleep. As much as you can. You won't be doing yourself any favours if you're staying up late (probably doing nothing except browsing the internet) because it doesn't give your body any time to fight off the illness. So go to bed early and just be more productive during the day.. AKA get off Facebook!
2. Tylenol Cold: Day and Night or something similar. These are great. End of story.
3. Cup-a-Soup these are great because you can bring your own travel mug and fill it with hot water from the tea station in the caf and they won't charge you for it, then add your cup-a-soup packet and you can bring your soup to class to soothe your sore throat. Also just great for when you're at home.  
4. Jello! I just love how soothing jello is on the throat and even if you're dead tired and sick it only takes 5 minutes to prep and then you throw it in the fridge and go nap and it'll be done when you wake up!
5. BRAT for getting over a stomach flu. Bananas, rice, applesauce and toast are all relatively easy on the stomach (or so mum told me) so while fighting to keep things down or recovering from that use it as a guide.

I can't think of anything else that wouldn't be common sense, even though the ones listed above kinda already are. Sleep, meds, cup-a-soup and jello, and BRAT got me through almost every sickness I've had. but as a bonus: Keep a garbage bin (not one with holes in it) beside your bed if you even think you might throw up. and if there's anything on the floor beside your bed shove it to the other side of the room (learned that from past experience, thanks for cleaning it up mom, you da real MVP). In cases where you are really feeling nauseous chewable Gravol works really fast and can help you feel better so that you can take a long nap. I've never taken it and stayed up cause sleep usually defeats nausea... Usually.

Take care!

Residence

Residence is a great place to live for first year student even though it is expensive. It is a sheltered way to move out of home because you have to learn to live with other people, cook for yourself, clean and just keep a house running smoothly without having to also juggle bills etc. I am currently living in my school's residence which definitely has it's ups and downs. I have enjoyed my residence experience for the most part so far and would definitely recommend it to others. It's a great learning experience but be aware that it's not always paradise.
Pros: 

• I'm a less than 5 minute walk to get into the school from my 4th floor suite.
• Furniture included
• Surrounded by people so it's relatively easy to make friends. 
• Shared common room
• Your own room!
• Full kitchen

Cons:

• I have had 5 roommates. Two of them dropped out, and the other two switched rooms and then we gained two new roomies so I now have 3.
• Shared common area
• Shared bathrooms
• Expensive
• I'm on the 4th floor and there are no elevators.
• The walls are paper thin, you can hear everything and I do mean everything. 
• You don't have someone to clean for you, and you have to share the tasks of cleaning the place.

So I know that's a pretty weak list of pros and cons because all in all it's not too bad to live here! Since there are (supposed to be) 6 of us, we have a fully functional kitchen which is great since I have recently discovered a love of baking and cooking. The shared common room is a pro and a con because everyone can hang out there which can be a good thing and a bad thing especially when the room is divided. Last semester we all had a difference in opinion of the temperature of the room. Three girls wanted it colder and the other two and I wanted it to stay the same or warmer. The worst thing that happened was the passive aggressive opening of the common room window, even at temperatures in the negatives. After yet another meeting with Rez management we came to the conclusion that the common room window could only be open if they were actively in the common room. This meant that the three of them stayed in the common room almost all day for an entire week. But before that all happened when we were all on good terms we all hung out in the common room majority of the time, most rooms do. That is why I put it on both the pro list and the con list.
I love having my own room, especially since it is bigger than my room at home but sharing walls kinda sucks, I'll have to make a post about that later. Even though the Cons list is bigger than the Pro list, most of it comes from having a shared living space which you'll have to deal with or else pay crazy rent for your own place, which has its own set of pros and cons. At least when you have roommates and floor mates you'll virtually never be alone, you'll almost always be able to find someone to talk to! 

Learn to Clean.

Bissell 3-in-1 Vacuum 

For girls (I can't speak for the guys) cleaning might just be the biggest problem you will have with your roommates, We all have someone in our house that cleans the majority of the time whether it's mom or dad or a cleaning lady/guy. Some of you might even have to do it as part of your chores, but whatever the case is for you just learn how to clean everything!  Even if you have never cleaned a thing in your life, it still isn't an excuse for not doing your part to help keep the common area clean! In my house my mum did most/all the cleaning in the house, all I had to clean was my room (and I didn't do that most of the time anyway), When I got to college cleaning came naturally/was just common sense, but for other people like my old roommates, not so much. I found out very quickly that I really like having a clean kitchen/common room and cleaned it by myself or with Annissa (my roommate) every weekend. This meant that I vacuumed the carpet, and then swept and vacuumed the rest which is linoleum. Annissa took care of mopping because she bought Pinesol so she would use that. We don't have any fancy cleaning supplies like the spin mop or a Dyson vacuum or anything like that. We both have the same vacuum which was $20 at Walmart. It works well and it beats having to try and sign one out from Rez. I haven't seen them but I imagine its about 20 years old and barely works. As for broom and mop we got both at Dollarama (this store is a godsend for college). They both use the same handle which was probably $1.25, the broom head was $2.00, dust pan $1.50, mop head probably $2.00 and then $1.25 for each reusable mop head. We didn't buy a mop bucket because we just use our garbage cans from our rooms. They aren't dirty because we use bags in them and wash them out every time we use it to mop with. I know you can get Pinesol and all sorts of cleaning products from Dollarama as well but it might be worth it to check out other stores for sales. We also got a toilet brush from Dollarama so none of our cleaning supplies cost us very much especially because we bought it all with money from empties that we returned to the Beer Store.
The bathroom is one of those places that no one wants to clean so doing it in rotating shifts would be good practice. For the most part our toilet doesn't need to be scrubbed (Thank God.) so just a squirt of toilet cleaner around the bowl and then using the brush to give it a swipe is good. Lysol wipes are awesome for cleaning the top of the bowl, behind the seat, on the seat, and just the rest of the toilet in general. For the shower we have the scrubbing bubbles spray foam and then after spraying that and letting it sit I put a disposable cloth on the mop head (it's like a Swiffer where the cloth just clamps on) and then wipe down the walls and the tub. For the tub you might actually have to take the cloth off and wipe down with your hands. Don't forget to unclog the drain! Hair build up can get super gross and affect how the drain functions, you can use Drain-O or a similar drain cleaning product or just use a pair of tweezers and grab the clumps (its kinda gross though).
Wiping down the counters, stove top and table after you use them is just good practice in general and will help keep everyone happy. Note that this does not mean wipe it onto the floor, it means also the floor around your work space should be cleaned up too. You don't have to vacuum and mop every time but if things drop onto the floor just pick them up. Don't leave garbage on the counters and floor either. Speaking of garbage, take the garbage out! You can all pitch in and take it out as a group with one person per recycle, garbage and compost bin to alleviate the grudges that can be formed by one person always taking it out.
DO YOUR DISHES.
This was one of the biggest problems we had with one particular roommate. She would leave a sink full of dishes for DAYS, we're talking like 3-5 days on the regular, 7 days was the longest. She quickly became the least liked roommate and we had to have a meeting with management and her about it. Easiest way to deal with this is to not let it happen by doing your dishes. I have a rule of max 48 hours that we all abide by since it was set in the meeting by management. Leaving your dishes for 48 hours is excessive and usually only happens if we're really busy with school and homework etc.

TL;DR? You should just be clean in general. Your room can be as messy as you want so long as funky smells aren't seeping under the door, but keep areas you share to a reasonable standard of cleanliness.

• Wipe off counters, stove tops, and tables. Pick up any food/mess that you make on the floor.
• Sweep/vacuum and mop the floors once a week
• Lysol wipes are your best friend for the bathroom
• DO YOUR DISHES

Happy Cleaning! 

Welcome!

Hi! Welcome to the wonderful world of navigating college and how to survive thrive. I'm a first year (second semester) Pharmacy Technician student at Fleming College and even though I've only been in school a short while I have learned SO much. College is really a learning experience not only will you learn about your chosen course but you'll also learn an amazing amount about yourself! Before going off to college you think that you know yourself but you really don't... not until you've lived away from mum and dad and moved in with new people! More on that in later posts though. I'm not sure how often I'll be posting because of classes and whatnot but I'll try for 1-2 times a week.
See ya!