Let’s be honest here: Vermont is cold. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You will get numb toes, a runny nose, and chapped lips. However, there are simple ways to combat the cold.

1. Yoga Pants Underneath Your Jeans: Isn’t it weird that your top half gets a lot of coverage but your bottom half just gets a pair of jeans? That can get pretty cold! Since you don’t want to trudge to class wearing snow pants, yoga pants are a better option. They’re comfortable, discreet, and simple. What more could you ask for?
2. Mittens Instead of Gloves: This is very important. If you isolate your fingers in gloves, they will get really cold (not to mention lonely), but if you put them all together in a mitten, they will work together to warm each other up! Plus, campus makes this easy for you because most of the door handles are push-down instead of plain old knobs, so you won’t need your bare, shivering fingers to help you open a door.
3. Hats: No, not a baseball hat. One that goes over your ears. It can have a puffball on it, cat ears, another pair of eyes, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is protecting your poor ears from the cruel bite of Vermont weather during your long, treacherous walk to class.
4. Travel Mugs: Wearing mittens not enough? Put some nice hot chocolate into a mug and hold onto it for dear life on a cold day. Not only can hot chocolate (or any other hot drink of your choice) make you feel warm and fuzzy in class, but if you take it on the go with you, you can withstand the strongest blizzard!
5. Wool Socks: Seriously, ditch all your cotton socks when the weather drops below fifty degrees. You could be wearing the thickest boots and your toes will still freeze in cotton socks. Invest in a pair of wool socks. Professional Writing professor and nature enthusiast Jim Ellefson recommends SmartWool socks.                                        
6. Campus Warm-cuts: Not shortcuts, warm-cuts. Cutting through buildings to get somewhere without spending too much time out in the cold. Want to get to the library from the dining hall? Cut through Joyce. On the bottom floor of the CCM building and want to get to the library? Get to the fourth floor, go through the CCM–Ireland connector, and let yourself out through the double doors to Aiken Quad. Want to get to the shuttle from the IDX building? Step out of IDX into Rozendaal Courtyard, run as fast as you can to the Alumni Auditorium, go down the stairs, and you’re at the shuttle! There are loads more warm-cuts out there, so go exploring around campus before it gets too cold!
7. Removable Layers: No one likes the dreaded walk up from the 194 apartments. It’s long, tiring, and quite sweaty! That sweatiness doesn’t go away when it gets cold, either. What do you do? Wear removable layers! A light jacket, a sweatshirt, and then your regular T-shirt. That way, if it gets hot on the way up, you can pack your jacket into your backpack and continue up the hill in your sweatshirt.
8. Lip Balm: Your lips will get chapped and you won’t like it. Sacrifice three dollars at the bookstore to get chapstick or vaseline, unless you want the only warm thing on your body to be the unbearable burning of your lips.
9. Go to the Gym: That way, when you go back outside it won’t be as cold! Plus, you can condition yourself to run faster through the cold.
10. Use Common Sense: Actually wear winter clothes! Please don’t be one of those people walking around campus on a snow-covered sidewalk with flip-flops and shorts. We understand that you just came back from the gym or you just needed to go on a quick errand, but for the sake of all that is good in this world, please wear a normal pair of pants! (And no, we don’t admire you for withstanding the cold. We just think you look ridiculous.)

With these winter tips, you could basically survive Antarctica (okay, maybe not Antartica). I follow all (okay, most) of these tips, so if I can do it, believe me, you can too. So study up, bundle up, and good luck!