Sourced from personal experience, my friends, my enemies, unsolicited advice, and common sense.
- Create an email filter for Randi Mogul emails.
Listen, I know what you’re thinking. “Isn’t that dramatic? It’s just emails every so often, I can deal with that.” And maybe you can for all four years. Maybe you are stronger than I am. But personally, the day I woke up hungover, opened my phone, and saw three separate notifications about fluffernutters, I was done. And my life has been gorgeously free of having to manually delete every single Chat-GPT generated fun fact since. (It’s super easy, y’all, and I promise it will make your life better. Just specify “trivia” and “winners” in your criteria, and send that shit straight to delete. You’re never going to win.)
- Use DK’s as a Walmart, when possible.
Of course, this doesn’t refer to the food. The food is still a fifty-fifty gamble of energizing you for the rest of the day or giving you food poisoning, a gamble I am happy to take over Commons’ 20/80 odds. However, DK’s also contains several sliding-refrigerator’s worth of commercial drinks, which can all be purchased with your Flex Dollars. STOCK UP. Quoth the Elle (Elisa Turner’27), “you can purchase like eight at a time before you get weird looks.” This way, when the shuttle is inevitably cancelled, leaving you without groceries for four days, you can at least rest easy in the comfort of the Juice Monster Variety Pack Editions for sale.
- Get on antidepressants.
No, I mean it. It’s a common refrain that we all want to kill ourselves here at Beloit, but if you’re from somewhere that doesn’t have long-ass winters or Diane Hendricks, you’re going to start losing it your first February here. Start shoving that sertraline into your SAD-addled brain right now. I mean it. If you can’t afford antidepressants, I’d also recommend Vitamin D supplements, because God knows you aren’t gonna be getting enough of that either. It’s tempting, but nobody has actually managed to throw themselves off the Powerhouse bridge into oncoming traffic, and we’d like to keep it that way.
- Take food from Commons.
Many colleges and universities, in addition to their more specialized offerings, maintain a dining hall that is open 24/7 with easy meal options for students whose schedules, mental health, or personal commitments might not permit them to go during more traditional hours. Unfortunately, you’re at Beloit College. If you’ve got an off-campus job or personal commitments, you will not be using up those meal swipes. Additionally, taking food out of Commons in order to store in your room is also verboten, for the reason of “fuck you personally, you job-having whore.” (There was some talk about giving students tupperware for this purpose, but alas, it came to naught.) Therefore, I must always recommend to the common Beloiter: know which one of your large hoodies or sweatshirts can conceal store milk cartons, bananas, apples, oranges, a thermos, or (if you’re daring) popsicles. Personal records I have overheard, which I cannot verify and would not like to, include: six bananas in each hoodie sleeve, a quart of soymilk in the pocket of an overlarge coat, and three lemons in a sports bra.
- Take advantage of your union rights.
BSWU did not spend a whole summer in negotiations just for you to be exploited further. Read your rights, especially if you are becoming a student worker after the amendments to the contract between the Student Union and Beloit College. Then use them. It might sound like I’m glazing the Union here, and maybe I am, but considering that we all enjoy the rights that other unions fought for — eight-hour workdays, mandatory paid breaks, OSHA regulations, and minimum wage, to name a few — I cannot recommend enough that you know your rights, including the recently-updated ones.
Featured image: Claire Winter
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