Somehow you ended up with four 9am classes this semester. WTF? You can barely get up for your kickboxing class at noon on Fridays, and someone expects you to make it to class (ready to learn!?) by 8:50am the rest of the week?

Oh hell no.

You hope your professor doesn’t expect you to look presentable. Hell, he should just be happy you left yourself enough time to brush your teeth. Your morning routine is always the same: you roll out of bed at 8:30, grab the first pair of sweats you can find on the floor, throw your hair into a ponytail and run out of the house. You pop into the campus coffee shop en route to lecture and grab a coffee (“Giant, please!”) and something to munch on (“Give me the butteriest bagel you’ve got back there”).

What? It’s early and you need comfort.

You slide into your seat just as the Power Point appears on the wall in front of you. If it weren’t for the food, you’d probably fall right back to sleep – you’re just so comfortable. When class is over, you go to your next class, or to the library, or home for a nap. Whichever you choose, you sport the sweats for the rest of the day: through the classes, the breaks, the meals…

You spend so much time in your sweatpants during the week, in fact, that when the weekend comes and it is time to wear something that doesn’t say “Pink” across the ass you have trouble getting into them. No, not motivating yourself to get dressed; actually getting into them. After the first few weeks of classes your clothes feel a bit snug but you can still make em work (“I must have shrunk these a bit in the dryer….”). As the semester wears on, however, putting on your going-out-jeans has become a sweaty workout.

When the pants stop moving at your thighs, you begin to pull harder. You grab the belt loops and yank, squeezing your thighs, butt and belly into the denim sausage casing. Then you jump around a bit. Then you lay on the bed and see if that helps. If you finally do get those suckers closed, you start lunging around your room, doing squats, and sitting down to see if the denim gives a little bit.

It does not, but you’ve already tried on every other pair in your closet and these fit the best. You decide they will have to do. You throw on a loose shirt on top (to camoflauge the muffin top), throw back a few more drinks and head out.

Your legs and feet begin to fall asleep at some point in the night due to decreased circulation. You have trouble bending your knees to get up the stairs to exit the bar. Your jeans nearly tear as you sit in the cab. When you finally get home and peel those things off  – and notice the deep red line across your belly – you know you’ve got to do something.

It is then that you vow never to wear sweats to class again; those elastic waistbands are far more forgiving of the donuts, the bagels and the sugary Fraps you fill yourself with on a daily basis. (Note: when sober you also realize that cutting those things out of your diet may be a good idea, too.)

We know how you feel. We’ve all had the sweat pant weight gain before. Just get up for that kickboxing class and you’ll be OK.

1) The Internet: Essential to keeping up with friends from home (and that kid you haven’t seen since  pre-kindergarden), essential to keeping up with world news (gawker.com, anyone?), and very, very excellent at wasting your time (during class, during your chem final cramming session, at four am in the morning when you just have to broadcast your insomnia on Twitter…).  Leave your laptop in your dorm room when you attend lectures if you want to save your grades. If you must bring it to take notes, turn off the wireless.  And if you really don’t trust yourself, install a self-control application to help set a daily time limit on time-wasting websites.

2) Ass-crack of dawn classes. Try as you might to schedule classes around your personal body rhythms (the preferred way to avoid this), there comes a time in every girl’s college career when she realizes that the only available section of a mandatory course meets early in the morning.  Combat the potential damage to your batting average by buying a new alarm clock, an extra cup of coffee, rewarding yourself for waking up with five minutes on your favorite blog before you dash off to class, or finding a classmate on your hallway to share in your pain….and notes, if one of you ever oversleeps.

3) Ovulation. For all intents and purposes: that time of the month when you really need to get some.  Do not go out to a bar and accept drinks from a cute stranger/stick your tongue down his throat if it’s Tuesday night you know you should be working on the key slides for your history power-point presentation.  Save your grades, buy a vibrator. You’ll also cut out the make-up application time, the cab fare, the hangover, and the heartbreak.

4) Poor time management.  Do not: begin a physics problem set two hours before the deadline; assume that you don’t need sleep to start, finish, and edit your English paper; double-book your best friend’s birthday dinner and your art history study session; forget to crack your sociology textbook until finals season rolls around; let your period catch you off-guard before your swim test.  Avoid these things with: an online calendar, a cute planner, a that-time-of-the-month reminder.

5) “Interesting” (and insanely difficult) electives. You’ve always wanted to know how to fix a computer.  Or understand  evolutionary anthropology. Only the computer science teacher lost you on the syllabus and that anthro course requires you to read two books per week and write two thousand words of textual analysis.  Yes, college is a time to explore new things, but just prepare yourself for an inevitable dip in the GPA when you’re up until two in the morning working on this “elective” and ignoring the work of your more important courses. You should definitely still take it (that’s what college is for, right?), just be forewarned…

Oh hell no.

You hope your professor doesn’t expect you to look presentable. Hell, he should just be happy you left yourself enough time to brush your teeth. Your morning routine is always the same: you roll out of bed at 8:30, grab the first pair of sweats you can find on the floor, throw your hair into a ponytail and run out of the house. You pop into the campus coffee shop en route to lecture and grab a coffee (“Giant, please!”) and something to munch on (“Give me the butteriest bagel you’ve got back there”).

What? It’s early and you need comfort.

You slide into your seat just as the Power Point appears on the wall in front of you. If it weren’t for the food, you’d probably fall right back to sleep; you’re just so comfortable. When class is over, you go to your next class, or to the library, or home for a nap. Whichever you choose, you sport the sweats for the rest of the day: through the classes, the breaks, the meals…

You spend so much time in your sweatpants during the week, in fact, that when the weekend comes and it is time to wear something that doesn’t say “Pink” across the ass you have trouble getting into them. No, not motivating yourself to get dressed; actually getting into them. After the first few weeks of classes your clothes feel a bit snug but you can still make em work (“I must have shrunk these a bit in the dryer….”). As the semester wears on, however, putting on your going-out-jeans has become a sweaty workout.

When the pants stop moving at your thighs, you begin to pull harder. You grab the belt loops and yank, squeezing your thighs, butt and belly into the denim sausage casing. Then you jump around a bit. Then you lay on the bed and see if that helps. If you finally do get those suckers closed, you start lunging around your room, doing squats, and sitting down to see if the denim gives a little bit.

It does not, but you’ve already tried on every other pair in your closet and these fit the best. You decide they will have to do. You throw on a loose shirt on top (to camoflauge the muffin top), throw back a few more drinks and head out.

Your legs and feet begin to fall asleep at some point in the night due to decreased circulation. You have trouble bending your knees to get up the stairs to exit the bar. Your jeans nearly tear as you sit in the cab. When you finally get home and peel those things off  – and notice the deep red line across your belly – you know you’ve got to do something.

It is then that you vow never to wear sweats to class again; those elastic waistbands are far more forgiving of the donuts, the bagels and the sugary Fraps you fill yourself with on a daily basis. (Note: when sober you also realize that cutting those things out of your diet may be a good idea, too.)

We know how you feel. We’ve all had the sweat pant weight gain before. Just get up for that kickboxing class and you’ll be OK.