Is it cold in here...or is it just me?

There are a lot of great things about living on a college campus. I've lived on PLNU's campus all four years and have never wanted to leave. Here are three great reasons to live on campus:

1. Living near friends: When you live off-campus, you live with 2-4 roommates, and you may have a casual friendship with a couple neighbors. Living on campus, you live with 1-4 roommates, but you have 30 or 40 other guys or girls around you who become your "second roommates." When I lived in Hendricks Hall, our hall became almost like a fraternity. We did things together all the time, from date nights to Covenant group (Bible study) to going to the mall or the beach.

Hendricks Hall was good to me my first two years of college

2. You are more involved, guaranteed: When you live off campus, chances are a lot less likely that you're going to come back to campus for cool events like baseball games, Movie in the Greek, or Bobby B's (the school president's) Birthday Bash. Even off-campus events like Superhero Bowling are much more likely to draw your interest, as everyone on campus will be talking about the event and what awesome costumes everyone is going to wear, etc.

Two of my current roommates, Chip (left) and James (right) at Bobby B's Bash

My friend Nathan getting creative at Superhero Bowling

3. Lastly, the fact of the matter is that you're going to be spending a lot of time on campus either way. With classes, the library, meetings, chapel, and so much more happening on campus, you'll be here all the time either way. You'll also probably have a lot of down time in between things. Those hour and a half breaks are a lot easier when you can head back to your dorm instead of wandering around campus or driving back and forth from your house.

Also, parking is pretty crowded on this campus, and if you drive onto campus at 8:30 you're guaranteed to have to walk a long way to class. Better if you're in the dorms and you can just make a short walk or hop on the shuttle.

So these are some of the great things about living on campus. There are also admittedly one or two bad things about living on campus. One is trying to get to bed at a decent hour in an underclassman dorm (I love Hendricks, but I didn't get nearly enough sleep those two years). The other is the fact that if one person on campus gets a cold, it's almost guaranteed that 50 other people will catch that cold by the end of the week.

Last year I managed to pretty much avoid getting sick all year. This year, I got sick before October even hit. Runny nose, cough, sneezing, sore throat - pretty much every single ailment that's listed on the back of the Nyquil bottle - I've had them all this week.

Fortunately, we have an awesome Wellness Center on campus, and I went in yesterday. There's a nurse practitioner on duty, which is pretty much the same thing as a doctor (translation: she can give you drugs). So I got this prescription cough medicine called Cheratussin, which makes you roughly 10 times more drowsy than Nyquil. So basically I can stay awake during the day and be sick, or I can sleep/hallucinate 24/7. Tough choice.

I hope you enjoy the clip from Tina Fey on SNL impersonating Sarah Palin as much as I did (if you haven't seen Palin speak before, find an actual clip of her before watching- Tina's impersonation is classic). Until next time, I'll be sipping on Cheratussin and honing my Goldeneye skills (yep, that's right, our apartment has an N64).