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!