While everyone else on campus was heading home or hanging out this past weekend, I was lying in bed suffering through a cold. Cuddling a box of tissues, I tuned into the Food Network and this is how I stayed for three days.

I think one of the hardest things to do in college is to take care of your health. Surrounded by people all the time, you never know when a simple cough from the person who sits behind you in class could drag you into a cesspool of germs and ruin your weekend.

There is only so much you can do to avoid getting sick, but one of the best tips I have is to carry portable hand sanitizer in your backpack or on your keys. I keep a pocket-sized hand sanitizer in a hand sanitizer holder on my keys so I can always have it with me. I also buy bigger containers of sanitizer so I can refill my pocket-sized container as needed. This way, after I have been at class all day, before I head to the dining hall to dig into a cheeseburger, I can at least ensure that 99.9 percent of the germs on my hands have been terminated. It gives me the reassurance that I am keeping myself healthy.

I also keep some hand sanitizer in my purse, my backpack, and my car. These are all great places to put hand sanitizer, so if you are not in a situation where you can get to the bathroom to wash your hands before you eat or after you pump gas into your car, you can still have something to sanitize with. Another great use for hand sanitizer is wiping down your phone case. Phones can become incredibly dirty. I have a pink phone case and the dirt shows up on it very easily, so I constantly sanitize my phone because it is so obvious. To those of you with darker colored phone cases, you may not notice how dirty your phone actually is, so a tip is to use a pump of hand sanitizer every once in a while to sanitize the item that probably makes the most contact with your face, hands and every surface around you during the day.

Another tip I have found handy is to drink orange juice. I like to keep small containers of orange juice in my refrigerator, and I drink a few every week. Orange juice can be great for boosting your immune system.

Keeping up your health is so important in college because it is hard to make up what you missed in class while you were sleeping in, nursing a sore throat. Using hand sanitizer is a very convenient way to keep yourself out of the way of germs and making sure you get enough immune-boosting foods into your body is also great for keeping your health in check and your weekends enjoyable. In my case, I will hopefully be getting back on my feet within the next couple days.

Amanda Gibson can be contacted at [email protected].