• First of all, don’t do it. Get sick at home, remember? At home you can spend 50% of your time asleep, 30% of your time whining, and 20% of your time killing time on the internet.
  • That said, you’re actually very likely to get sick at school, especially your freshman year. I don’t know whether anyone has ever noticed this before (I am often cutting-edge in my insights), but we college kids do not have especially healthy lifestyles. We eat cinnamon toast crunch at every meal and sleep irregular hours. None of this is conducive to good health. The other problem is that there are so damn many of us. In the words of my father, “You are probably surrounded by more germs than at any time since [preschool]. The great Plague of 1918 (which killed your great-grandfather’s wife and son, thank God, lest we not exist) was mostly spread by housing WWI soldiers in massive barracks, each sleeping 12 inches from the next guy. Whoosh, they carried it across the world.”
  • Getting sick at school is particularly dreary because the world does not stop for you. Your clubs still have meetings and your friends still want to see if you’re down for froyo and your classes march on without you. Your teacher is unlikely to call your phone and ask if you are okay and see if she should assign someone to take the homework to your house. You still have to be somewhat responsible when you’re sick in college, which dashes the number one perk to being sick at home.
  • Obviously, you should take lots of drugs. I personally favor an Advil/Dayquil/Nyquil/Sudafed/Ricola strategy, taking as many of each as could possibly be nonlethal. At the very least, you become so cracked out on various painkillers and anti-inflammatories that you forget all about being sick.
  • If for some reason you don’t want to take 82 pills per day, you can try the non-pharmaceutical remedies. Tea is useful in that it is hot and in that it is a vessel for honey. Drink as much tea as possible (people will also think you are sophisticated). If you really are sophisticated, try Yujacha, a hot Korean beverage that is known as a cold remedy, or so I hear.
  • If it’s a really dire situation (you are unable to sleep/you have lost your eyesight/you are vomiting blood), go to Health Services. They will make you wait in waiting rooms and prod you with diagnostic instruments and ask you inappropriate questions about your mental stability. Then they will tell you that what you have is probably viral and send you on your merry way. Every time you resort to Health Services, your ailment will be viral.

Do you want to walk over to my dorm and bring me hot soup? Thanks. You’re nice. I’ll tell you where I live if you ask nicely in the comments (no I won’t).