Rexburg Winter Survival Tips

To all my family/friends back in California that follow my blog posts, this (obviously) won't really apply to you. However, you're free to read on if you wish! 

I'm writing this blog post for all my little freshmen/transfer friends to read and hopefully learn something from, since winter is finally starting to hit and it's dangerous to be completely clueless as to how to handle it. So here we go! Here are my tips for surviving winter in Rexburg:

TIP #1 MOST IMPORTANT TIP: CHECK. THE. WEATHER.

Like most places in the U.S., Rexburg will occasionally have a "warm" winter day. If you've spent the past two weeks bundled up like a marshmallow expecting the next snow-pocalypse, this weather will come as a rude awakening. You'll sweat yourself to death, trust me. And this of course applies for the other way around, as well--we might have a mild week and then suddenly BAM! Rexburg freezes overnight! I had roommates last fall who NEVER checked the weather and without fail, they always dressed the exact opposite of how they should have. And of course were constantly whining about it, which drove me insane. So, to keep your roommates from wanting to murder you, and for the above mentioned reasons, just check the weather every morning. It's not that complicated, I promise.

TIP #2 Layers

Some of you may have already figured this out, but for those who haven't, here you go: layers are your new best friend. Trust me. On an average winter day (a high of roughly 15 degrees) I will wear a t-shirt, cardigan, light zip-up hoodie, big coat (sometimes a snow coat, if there's actually snow), scarf, hat, and gloves. Plus flannel leggings or tights under your pants, and roughly 2-3 pairs of socks with boots. Sounds insane, right? Wrong. If you walk to class, you work up a sweat getting to your building. So, you step inside and take of your scarf, hat, gloves, and huge jacket. Then you get into your classroom and discover that the heat has been cranked up to 80 degrees. You're becoming pleasantly warm, and feeling great. Til you're not so pleasantly warm anymore. Then you can shed your other two jackets, and "cool off" a bit. As you get chillier though out your class period, you can layer things back on accordingly. But this was the first tip someone gave me when I came up to school, and it's been one of the life-savers.

TIP #3 Stretching

You're probably thinking: stretching? Really? What are we, senior citizens? Gotta "limber up" before we head off to class? Well, actually, yeah. After sleeping in a (probably) rigid position for the night, you'll wake up and have to get out of that cozy cocoon of a bed feeling like a ton of frozen bricks hit you. If you take a few minutes to stretch (touch your toes, roll your shoulders, etc) before hopping in the shower, I promise it'll make your freezing walk to class more bearable. If your muscles are already frozen stiff and then you step outside into the cold, you're going to be aching and miserable by the time you get into your classroom.

TIP #4 How to walk through snow

This honestly sounds like the dumbest instructional video ever. Because anyone who hasn't lived in snow (or anything less than a foot of snow at a time) would think: well duh, you just WALK through it. Like you walk through anything else. Buuuut...no. There are different "levels" of snow danger, so to speak, and trust me you don't wanna be that person that blunders cluelessly through campus and ends up slipping flat onto their back, papers flying, and your butt frozen and wet the rest of the day. So this tip has some sub-tips for you.

SUBTIP 1: Do not text and walk. I didn't have a ton of trouble getting used to this concept since your hands are so frozen you just wanna keep them shoved in your pockets, but there are people who do it. And EVERY SINGLE PERSON that I ever saw fall...had their cell phones out. Coincidence? I think not. This may seem dumb, but the other part of this subtip is that you HAVE to watch where you're going. Random little patches of ice can appear anywhere, and if you're texting or Snapchatting or checking Twitter or what have you while you're walking, you're gonna eat it. Hard.

SUBTIP 2: Sometimes the snow is safer than the sidewalk. I know this sounds really dumb, but think about it--sometimes there will be days where it snows, and then it's just freezing for a week, and then it snows again. The previous snow hasn't melted, but has hardened into a thick coating of nasty ice. When you're walking on the sidewalk, that ice is super easy to trip on, cuz you usually can't see it. But if you walk through some of the grassy area (previously grassy, since it's now covered in snow) it's actually safer, since you have fresh snow to walk through instead of ice. So you if you see the "weirdos" walking through campus that way, you should know that they're actually really smart. Don't judge the weirdos.