The heavy cost of heavy drinking

With aggressive drinking and partying comes a heavy price tag in the shape of a hangover.  Every college student figures out their hangover prevention system by their third or fourth year of college, but I’m about to give all the youngsters out there the secret to bouncing back after an all day bender.  So take out your notepads and pay attention, this will save you a lot of Sundays which would otherwise be lost to recovery.

Key Principle 1: Don’t Crash Before Hydrating

While it may be extremely hard to not simply face-plant into your bed as soon as you get home after a long night of partying, you’re going to have to resist that urge.  The number one cause of hangovers is dehydration (it’s science), so you’ll have to do your best to drink lots of water (or even better, drink something with electrolytes like Gatorade).  If you’re planning to really get after it one night, you might have to just setup the water rehydration plan before you go out. One of my favorite moves is to already have a glass of water or gatorade sitting next to my bed before I go out so I don’t forget to drink it before hitting the bed.

Key Principle 2: Learn to Recognize Your Shrinking Sobriety

The ability to tell when you’ve had too much to drink and then cut yourself off is a skill that can only be obtained through years of training in the most raucous party environments.  You’ll just have to get your reps in during your first couple years of college.  Once you learn to recognize when you’ve had too much, you’ll be able to prevent a lot of bad hangovers and more importantly, prevent bad decisions you may or may not regret (see TextsFromLastNight).

Hangover Prevention Myths:

1) Eating a big late night dinner will prevent the pain. FALSE.  This can actually backfire on you if the food contains a lot of salt which will cause even more dehydration.  Just stick to Key Principle 1 and you’ll wake up on Sunday and feel like running 6 miles.

2) “Sticking to beer will keep you in the clear”. FALSE. Once again, it’s all about hydration, and even though beer has a lot of water in it, it can still dry you out, especially if you’re planning to do some heavy day-drinking.  However, drinking beer can help you work with Key Principle 2, because it’s slower than ripping shots of tequila and trying to figure out if you’ve had too much.

Keeping these principles and myths in mind the next time you go out will save you some serious pain on Sunday morning so you can spend more time doing homework, studying or drinking more on Sunday.  I’m open to more suggestions from readers as well.  Cheers.

You did it! You graduated from high school . . . and it’s time to celebrate! Graduation parties have become one of the staples of high school graduations. It’s a great time to get family and friends together to celebrate the end of a very significant part of your academic life. The following tips will help you make sure that your grad party (and your grad party hopping) will be great.

Pick a good date. While you may be tempted to just choose a Saturday soon after graduation, it’s better to properly plan your party. Ask your friends when they’re having their parties, and do your best to coordinate so that you can get to at least a few of your close friends’ parties. Even if you’re planning your parties on the same day, you can try to have one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Send invitations. When it comes to sending invitations, there’s only one piece of advice that I can offer: invite a TON of people. Invite your friends, your relatives, your favorite teachers, and anyone else you can think of that might want to show up. The more people you can get to your graduation party, the better. It’s pretty standard to send written invitations via post, but it’s becoming increasingly common to send out email invitations instead. Whichever you decide to do, get a big list of people together and start sending!

Have a good time. When it’s time for your party, enjoy yourself! Talk to everyone that shows up, enjoy the copious amounts of food that are bound to be served, and have fun—this is a party to celebrate your achievement!

Plan your party hopping. Because almost everyone has a graduation party, you have a lot of options for visiting other parties. Running around and going to other graduates’ parties can be just as fun as having your own. Write down when your friends’ parties are, and start making a plan for hitting as many as you can. Graduation parties are in full swing for a few weeks after graduation, so you can plan on having a few full Saturdays of party hopping. Enjoy the summer weather, a whole lot of free food, and hanging out with your friends, free from the worries of school!

Send thank-yous. As much as you may not want to do this, make a point to send thank-you notes to everyone who came to your party, even if they didn’t leave you a card or a gift. It’s a really nice thing to do, and shows your attendees that you appreciate their showing up. It doesn’t need to be a whole lot (everyone understands that you’ll be sending a large number of notes), but it’s really classy to send out a card with a few sentences that express your gratitude.

Graduation parties are one of the best parts of finishing high school. Follow these suggestions and have a great time—you’ve earned it!

While many people think of drinking as a mainstay of college life, there are campuses where that isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, many colleges don’t even allow alcohol on campus. Colleges that adopt this policy are called “dry campuses.” While these schools make up a minority of colleges, it’s a good idea to check into your college’s rules regarding alcohol before you find out the hard way. Private colleges (especially those with religious affiliations) are more likely to be dry than public schools.

If a college advertises itself as having a dry campus, there will be zero tolerance for breaking the rules: if you are in possession of alcohol, you’re going to be in trouble. And it’ll probably be fairly serious trouble. Getting caught on a dry campus is not something that you want to risk. So be smart about it.

“Well then,” you may be asking, “what should I do if I want to drink?” Fortunately for you, it’s not expected that everyone on a dry campus will completely refrain from alcohol, so there’s no way that you can get in trouble for drinking if it’s off-campus. So if you’re over 21, you can go out to a local bar without risking getting caught doing something you shouldn’t (unless you signed a drug-free pledge when you got to school, which a few colleges require). If you live in an off-campus apartment, or have friends that do, you can have a few drinks there whenever you’d like. As long as you’re not on school grounds, you can pretty much do whatever you’d like. I’d caution against getting back on campus if you’re really drunk, however, as there’s a possibility that your public safety officers may not like that very much.

It gets a little more complicated if you’re under 21. Dry schools are much more likely to have pretty harsh punishments for underage drinking, especially if it happens on campus. You might get off with a warning the first time (if you’re lucky), but if it happens more than once, you can count on some pretty severe consequences, including—in extreme cases—being expelled. So it’s really not something that you want to mess around with.

But, as a former college student myself, I know that the risks won’t stop everyone. So you have to be smart about it. If you have to go out drinking on the weekends, make sure that you’re going somewhere off-campus. Just like I mentioned before, off-campus apartments and houses are safe (from college authorities, anyway—you still don’t want to get too rowdy and get busted by the cops). And if you’ve been drinking at all, don’t even go near campus. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights have always been the big party nights, and public safety officers will be on the prowl. If you’re showing any signs of having had a drink or two, stay at a friend’s house. Again, it just comes down to being smart about what you’re doing.

Drinking, on many college campuses, is a pretty popular weekend (and for some people, weeknight) activity. Most parties will have other things going on, like dancing or lawn games . . . but you can be sure that almost every party will have some sort of drinking game or another happening at any given time. There are as many drinking games as there are parties, but there are a few that are very popular and that you’ll probably see pretty often if you go to enough parties.

1) Beer pong. This is arguably the most popular college drinking game right now, so you can count on playing it quite a few times. To play, an odd number of plastic cups—usually five or seven—are set on a ping-pong table (or any table really) and filled with beer. How full depends on where you play. Each person (or team or two) gets to table tennis balls and attempts to throw them into the opposing player’s cup. If you land it in the cup, the other person has to drink that cup of beer. The balls are then rinsed off and the opposing player gets two shots. The first person to clear the other player’s cups wins. Sounds simple, right? It’s actually more difficult than you’d think. And there are an almost-infinite number of beer pong house rules that can change the game.

2) Flip cup. Flip cup (also known as “flippy cup”) requires less space (and concentration) than beer pong. This game is usually played with teams of at least two players. The first player has to finish a cup of beer as fast as possible and place the cup on the edge of a table. The player then has to flip the cup over so that it lands upside down by flicking the part of the bottom of the cup that’s hanging over the edge (check out this video to see a good example).

3) Quarters. There are many variations of Quarters, and it sometimes seems like no two people play by exactly the same rules. However, the game is always based around bouncing a quarter off of a table and into a shot glass or beer cup and forcing another player to drink the contents of the cup. The game can be played one-on-one, on teams, or in groups. You can pretty much make up your own rules to this one.

There are countless other drinking games, including some that use cards or dice. You can find the rules for all of these games (as well as house rules and videos of the games being played) on various websites. If you go to a lot of parties, you’ll probably be able to write your encyclopedia of drinking games!

College students are a group of perpetually broke people. Paying for tuition, housing, food, gas, books, and a social life takes a pretty high toll on the average student’s finances. Because of this, many students find themselves in credit card debt; the average college student owes over $2,500! Once you’ve put yourself in debt, it can be a difficult and overwhelming process fighting your way back out. It is possible, though, and can be achieved with a careful strategy for battling your credit card debt.

Before anything else, you need to assess your debt. You’ll need to figure out exactly how much debt you’re in, how much interest you’re paying on that debt, and how much you’ll owe in the near future if you don’t start paying it off. Once you’ve established an accurate picture of your debt, you’re ready to start getting rid of it.

Planning is a very important part of paying off your debt, and establishing a plan is a key component of being prepared to start battling credit card debt. College students, because of their fixed, low income, may find it difficult at first to start paying off their credit card debts. And it is difficult; you’ll definitely need to make some sacrifices. But once you realize how quickly your $2,500 of debt can turn into $5,000, or even $10,000, you’ll understand how important it is to start taking action immediately.

Once you’ve completed your assessment and established a plan, it’s time to start your attack. In order to get rid of your debt, you’ll need to aggressively pay off your creditors. High-interest credit cards should be paid first, as they can end up costing you thousands of dollars more than you actually spent. Don’t just pay the minimum payment – this won’t cover much more than the interest that you’re being charged, and will result in a longer repayment process, costing you more money. Set aside a specific amount of money from every paycheck that will go directly to paying off your credit card debt.

Once you’ve begun to make a sizable dent in your credit card debt, it’s important to start saving money. This will help prevent you from falling back into debt should an extenuating circumstance arise, such as a medical emergency or a broken-down car. If you have a cushion to spend from, you won’t have to use your credit card as much, which will go a long way in reducing your debt.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, you’ll need to cut your spending. No matter how many other measures you take, this is probably the one that will be the deal breaker. If you don’t spend money on going to concerts and ordering pizza all the time, you won’t have to use your credit card to pay for things like gas and groceries. Get your spending under control and you’ll get your debt under control.