College students are creatures of habit. We hang out with the same people. Got to the same bars. Buy the same types of clothes. Take the same classes. And you can’t blame us really. We know what we like. We know what works. So why change a good thing, right? Right. But not only does that apply to clothes and classes, it also applies to the kitchen. Because if there is one thing that has been made a college cliche, it’s college food. We’re known for our Red bull and Ramen noodles. But hey we’re creatures of habit, and we like what we like…

However, tomorrow morning, reality will set in. It breaks my heart, but you will discover you are not actually Lady Gaga, and you do have a term paper due on Friday. And you probably will have a hangover. I don’t think I can help you with the first two crises, but I do have a comprehensive guide to putting that hangover to bed.

Do your morning-after woes make you curse the day you were born? Never fear, there’s a recipe for that, and it’s simple enough not to compound that throbbing headache. Whip up these recipes tonight before going out. Your aching body will thank you tomorrow.

Got a searing headache?
You’re probably dehydrated. All those shots and Four Lokos have a diuretic effect on the body, meaning you lose water. So think like an athlete and grab some electrolyte-replenishing sports drinks to clear up that fog!

The remedy: Buy a bottle of Gatorade and pour it into an ice cube tray. You can place popsicle sticks in the cubes for a treat in the morning (especially nice just to suck on if you’re feeling nauseous too), or use the cubes to make a slushie. Pour them into a blender with some fresh fruit (I like pineapple), and churn away!

Got an upset stomach?
All that drinking can make your digestive system go bananas–which is why you should have some! They’re a binding food that represses stomach acid.

The remedy: Who says you can’t have pudding for breakfast? With this healthy, vegan-friendly recipe you’ll forget your stomach troubles.

Ingredients:

1 banana, broken into chunks
1 (12 ounce) package soft silken tofu
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tablespoons soy milk
1 pinch ground cinnamon

Instructions: Blend all ingredients together until smooth, then refrigerate before serving.

Body aches galore?
It feels like you just went for a marathon tune-up at the gym, but the only weights you were carrying were twin 40s, you’re not alone. The combined effects of dehydration and very little sleep can leave your muscles feeling lethargic and sore. Get your strength back with a little protein and cysteine, a non-essential amino acid that some say counter-acts the byproducts of metabolized alcohol in the body. Get a healthy dose of both with some eggs!

The remedy: Even most college freshmen can make this recipe without access to a kitchen, if you have a hot-water boiler and a toaster in a common room. Perfect for those hangovers where you can’t even make it out of your dorm to the dining hall, make some poached eggs on toast for an alternative to the hum-drum fake-egg omelets in the caf.

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• Dash of pepper
• Salsa
• Bread
• Hummus (optional)

Instructions:

Fill the hot water boiler about two thirds of the way and let it boil. Once it’s hot enough, turn the heat down so it’s no longer a “rolling boil” (i.e. bubbling madly). In a separate bowl, crack open the two eggs. Gently pour the contents of the bowl into the boiling water, being careful not to splash (try to gingerly slide the eggs in). Let the eggs cook about 5 minutes until they become solid and can be easily removed with a spoon. Serve on warm toast (prepared on the toaster) with salsa for dipping and garnish with a bit of pepper.  Get creative if you like and spread hummus on the toast for more protein.

"I'm running for the pizza. I'm running for the pizza!"

Ever wonder why those treacherous treadmill sessions haven’t turned you into the next Gisele?
Are you one of those people who thinks that you can eat a slice of pizza after leaving the gym because the body is supposed to burn more fat on days that you exercise?

Well, step away from the pizza, woman.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, the commonly held belief that you continue to burn calories for hours after exercising (commonly known as “afterburn” — you know, the idea that you get a “free meal” that day because you burned 400 calories on the elliptical) is actually a myth!

Researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver observed a number of different groups of people ranging from athletes to people that were both sedentary and obese to see how their bodies use calories and if the processes were different. Each group spent 24 hours in a room called a calorimeter (a special room that measures calorie burning activity) followed by riding a stationary bike for the same amount of time at the same level of aerobic intensity.

After all that was done, the scientists found that none of the groups (even the athletes, who are believed to have higher metabolisms after years of intense exercise) experienced afterburn, and surprisingly, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat on the days that they exercised.

“The message of our work is really simple,” lead researcher Edward Melanson told the New York Times. “It all comes down to energy balance,” which means that unless you burn more calories through exercise than you eat, you are not going to lose weight. Melanson went on to state that people burn an average of 200 to 300 calories per session, which is less than a bottle of Gatorade and just a little more than a bottle of the misleadingly-named Vitamin Water. Just a little somethin’ to think about.

Melanson also reported that working out at an low intensity (ie. riding the elliptical at an intensity of 3 instead of 10, so you feel the burn less but move your legs more often and quickly) burns more fat calories than working out at a harder intensity. Furthermore, it’s important to keep your heart rate between 105 and 134 beats per minute, which marks the parameters of the fat burning zone.

So the next time that you think you get a “free” lunch, think again!
You may also wanna switch that post-workout beverage to G2….

Is it just me or is something wrong with Rihanna’s new tat?

Get ready for Lilo, India!

Which college towns are the smartest?

Gatorade dumps Tiger Woods.

R. Kelly wants to be understood, dammit.

Book teaches how to date men. Does it work?

Welcome back to The Rival Rundown! If you’ve always wanted to give props to your school on CC, now’s your chance! Shoot us an email explaining what’s awesome and unique about your school (or what stinks about Rival U) at rivalrundown@collegecandy.com!

I live in New York, where suddenly it has gotten really. effing. cold.  (I wore my winter coat and a scowl over the weekend.)  So naturally I’ve been dreaming of what life would have been like had I gone to school in a more temperate climate where you can tailgate in tank tops and flip flops.  Such is the way things go in the Sunshine State, where the University of Florida and Florida State University have, quite literally, one of the hottest rivalries around.

1. Mascot Match-up

Florida – Call them Gator Nation, Gator Country, even Alberta and Albert (who won Sports Illustrated On Campus’ Best Mascot award); the Florida Gators are more than just a local species.
Florida State – The Florida State Seminoles, named for the Native Americans who first inhabited the area, are perhaps most famous for their war chant, which is among the most immediately recognizable songs in all of sports culture.

Three credits to: Hands-down, it’s Florida State. It’s the college chant at it’s absolute finest (and so simple, even babies can sing it)!

2. Athletic Assertiveness

Florida – The Gators have won 4 out of their 5 appearances in BCS Bowl Games as well as a rich tradition of sending athletes in the Olympic Games, with 90 medals awarded to UF alums.
Florida State – The Seminoles have appeared in six BCS Bowls, winning the national title in the 2000 Sugar Bowl.

Three Credits to:  A commanding appearance by Florida!

3. Terrific Traditions

Florida – Perhaps not a tradition, but more of a revered Gator contribution to society: the sports drink Gatorade was invented in Gainesville. Hence the name!
Florida State – Bored? Rainy night in? Looking for a party of the non-Greek variety? Head over to Crenshaw Lanes, Florida State’s own on-campus bowling alley! Where else can you bowl for less than $2 a game?

Three credits to:  Florida. To borrow the current Gatorade slogan, well, “that’s G.”

4. Ass-kicking Alumni

Florida – Faye Dunaway, Darrell Hammond, Bob Vila
Florida State – Deion Sanders, Burt Reynolds, Cheryl Hines

Three credits to: It’s a tie! Hard to pick a winner amongst these prominent names.

5. Acceptance Rate Agony (for the class of 2012)

Florida - 39.5%
Florida State - 46.7%

Three credits to: Florida, definitetively.

And the diploma goes to: Florida in a landslide! Florida State may have won the war (chant), but the Gators cream the Seminoles where it counts.

Mmmm. Irish Coffee should fix this right up!

It’s no secret that much of the college social life revolves around drinking. We drink to celebrate, mourn, express loyalty to our football teams, to ease boredom, hell,  some people drink to make homework a little more interesting (no, no one else does that?).  Well, all that super fun drinking  sometimes results in not-so-fun consequences: mysterious bruises, ruined shoes, hours’ worth of un-tagging on Facebook, that dude lying next to you, and the raging, horrific hangover trying to escape your brain by splitting it open.

What’s a girl to do? Your mind jumps to Gatorade (don’t have any), Egg McMuffins (dammit, it’s past 10:30!) and water (your Brita pitcher is full of hunch punch) before remembering that bottle of Bloody Mary mix in the back of the fridge. Should you suck it up, stir in some vodka and take a hair of the dog that bit you?

Nope.

The phrase itself refers to an old school Rabies cure (literally, they would place a hair of the dog that bit you in the wound), but has evolved into the idea that if you drink a small amount of whatever got you into this hung-over state, you’ll feel better. It didn’t work for rabies, and it won’t work for your hangover.

A hangover results because of the dehydrating effect alcohol has on your body. Remember what we learned about breaking the seal? Alcohol suppresses your brain’s ability to create anti-diuretic hormones, so you lose essential water, electrolytes, salts and glucose via bathroom breaks. The morning after, your body is frantically trying to replenish all that lost hydration, resulting in fatigue, headache, nausea, etc. These symptoms get worse as your body tries to rid all alcohol from its system, leading some to believe that all this hangover nonsense could be cured by simply drinking more.

Unfortunately, more alcohol will only postpone your hangover. It might temporarily relieve some of the symptoms of a hangover (and keep you in those beer goggles until the boy actually leaves), but when it wears off your body will still have to recover, only now it your liver has extra toxins to break down and remove. So in the end, your headache and nausea will probably be worsened by more alcohol, definitely not relieved.

The best cure for a hangover (besides, you know, not drinking in the first place) is to drink plenty of water to fight dehydration, some Gatorade or Powerade to replace electrolytes, lots of rest, and at least 4 hours worth of mind numbing TV, preferably Real Housewives or True Hollywood Stories, but whatever’s on VH1 will do in a pinch.

I learned more my first week at college than I did in my entire life. And I don’t mean academically. I mean socially, financially, emotionally and drunk-ly. Some things took longer to figure out than others (that I should visit the ATM before I get to the bar, to avoid extra fees and my tendency to tipsily make it rain) and other things took mere minutes (don’t eat dining hall hot dogs).

But there are 5 things that every freshman should figure out their very first week on campus. Consider this College Life 101: Intro To The Best 4 Years of Your Life.

The go-to hangover breakfast spot: For those mornings when a Gatorade and toast just won’t do the trick, you need to find the most happening breakfast place near campus. This is not only important for the mornings when you need to take things to-go (back to your bed where you can lie in the dark while watching Daisy of Love marathons), but also for the social aspect of morning-after breakfast. Because everyone knows, after the party it’s the after party…and after that and the hotel lobby… it’s IHOP.

So, on those mornings when your inner monologue sounds like “Hahalalala definitely still drunk and my hair and makeup still look great!” you’ll know where you and your girls can go to re-cap last night’s madness while chowing on carby goodness and watching people walk in wearing their clothes from the night before.

Where you can and can’t use your fake i.d. : I remember when I got my first fake i.d. (the same one I still have, actually, even though it expired in 2007 and I’ll be retiring it in a month). I was so excited to use it anywhere and everywhere (even when I wasn’t drinking). But that kind of enthusiasm definitely could have gotten me in big trouble if I hadn’t discovered very quickly where I could and couldn’t use it.

Ask any older friends or siblings you know who went to your school, hell ask friendly strangers! Just ask someone where your fake i.d. will get you in and where that puppy will taken.  The easiest way to figure out where to use your fake is to go out as much as possible, to as many bars as possible (which you’ll be doing anyways) and make a bartender/bouncer/shotgirl friend who can give you a heads up if the boss plans on, you know, enforcing the legal drinking age.

Your new address, where the post office is,  and protocol for paper mail and packages. Grandma needs somewhere to send those care packages! And you sure as hell can’t tell her where to send delicious cookies or money “for an ice cream sundae” if you don’t have your new dorm address memorized. Or written down. Anywhere. Also, figure out if packages should be sent to your campus p.o. box or the front desk of your dorm. Unfortunately the Fed-Ex guy won’t deliver that hot new mini dress straight to your dorm room.

The best campus hangouts: For those rare occasions you want to enjoy the company of your new friends sans Johnny, Jack and Jose…or even, you know, study, you need a place to go other than your oh-so-spacious dorm room. Read your campus newspaper, look at fliers around your dining hall or just listen to word-of-mouth. Your campus might have a famous burger joint where everyone chills, a live music hookah bar, a local coffee shop. Even if the campus hot spot is a library, it’ll be nice to hang out somewhere where you’re bound to know someone even if Starbucks starts charging for Wi-Fi (personal true story) and it gets too cold to lounge on the quad.

Fashion protocol: Even now that you’ve finally arrived on campus, it’s time to start dressing like you belong there (which, of course, you already do if admissions had anything to say about it). Take a look around to gather the general fashion climate of your school. Do you see a lot of girls wear their gym clothes to class or do they usually get more dressed up? Are PJ’s a do or don’t in the dining hall? If you needed to wear heels for an interview or event before/after class, should you bring a change of shoes?

I’m not saying you should get decked out to go to class or that you should go out and buy an entirely new wardrobe (although if you can swing it, by all means get your shop on), but you don’t want to stick out like a weird freshman sore thumb. The best way to figure out a way to college-ify your look is to check out older girls whose fashion sense you admire, or whose is similar to yours, and put your own spin on it. Then you’ll be “that girl who always dresses so cute” and not “that freshman who wears Crocs.”

What do you guys think is the most crucial stuff to learn your first week (besides all the important/boring stuff they go over at orientation)? What do you wish you’d learned right off the bat?

No matter how crazy you think your personal situation is, it is not just you. So, let’s bring it all out in the open. Right here. Because you are not alone - we’ve all been there before.]

Oh what a night.

From the pre-party to the bar to waking up next to that that kid from your Psych lecture, it was a good one. A great one. A night that is meant to be shared. A night that is meant to be remembered. A night that requires your roommates’ pictures to help in the remembering.

But, man do you feel like hell this morning. You wake up, throw on some sweats (and throw the boy out), and head down to the kitchen for a much-needed bottle of Gatorade. It’s early – you never can sleep in after a long night of drinking – so you tip toe through the house.

When you stumble down the steps, though, you hear some commotion in the kitchen. You round the stairs and smack into 5 of your roommates, coffee and toast in hand, waiting for you on the couch. Apparently they can’t sleep in either.

One of the girls hands you a mug of coffee. Oh sweet bliss.

Everyone is still wearing their makeup from the night before, which only complements the giant black circles under their eyes. As you sit down and start sipping on your coffee, your 6th roommate walks into the house, still wearing her tube top and trouser jeans from the night before. Her heels are in her hand. Her neck is covered in hickeys.

You notice a pile of cameras on the table. Next to them, empty shot glasses and dried up lime wedges. The thought of tequila shots sends shivers down your spine as you flash back to the night before.

“So….” One of your roommate’s looks to you for your story. And so it begins.

You regale your roommates with tales of your late night adventures: how you started talking to the boy, the line you used to get him to come home with you (“I got some new sheets…”), and how good (or bad) his skills were in the bedroom. You give them every little detail – the kind of stuff you can only share with these girls – in between much needed gulps of coffee.

Then it’s your roommate’s turn to share her stories. And then the next.

You all pass the cameras around, filling in the gaps and holes of the evening. You laugh at the 1,276 selfies you took, the videos that you thought were pictures and the gross guys that tried hitting on everyone at the bar. You compare late-night eating horror stories (“So that’s where all my cream cheese went??”), and make fun of the late-comer who is still wearing her bar outfit.

“I mean, really, who the hell still gives hickeys?!”

Before you know it, it is 3pm, you are all still sitting around in your PJs, and you know way more about some random dude’s kissing abilities than you ever thought you should. You order in some Jimmy Johns or pizza or greasy Chinese and spend the rest of the day chilling on the couch until it’s time to get up, get ready and do it all again.

Yeah, we’ve all been there. The morning-after recap is the best.

In 2008′s least shocking expose, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution dredged the sweat-stained pit of college academics and came up with, essentially, a national “dumb jock” joke.

Hating on athletes is pretty standard practice for the squishy intellectual set, probably because we’ve got a few bones to pick about getting stuffed in lockers and picked last for dodgeball. (As an aside, has anyone actually been stuffed into a locker in the past thirty years? The jocks these days just steal our iPods.)

But, whether we hear it from major newspapers or the bottom of locker no. 104, the news is the same: at the corner of college athletics and college admissions, something is gravely ill.

At the University of Georgia, the average football SAT was 949, which is 239 points behind the average for an undergraduate student at Georgia — and 79 points behind Tech’s football average. The Bulldogs’ average high school GPA was 2.77, or 45th out of 53 teams for which football GPAs were available. Their SAT average ranked them 22nd.

Nationwide, coaches who would never offer a scholarship to a player who was 6 inches shorter or half a second slower than other prospects routinely recruit players whose standardized test scores suggest they’re at a competitive disadvantage in the classroom.

For every school that had football and men’s basketball SAT data available, team members averaged hundreds of points lower than the general student body. And the best average football SAT score in the nation – 1058 at Georgia Tech – would barely be acceptable in your average liberal arts school candidate.

So what’s the problem here? Sure, UConn’s basketball department loved to rep 3.8-toting hoops star Emeka Okafor, but it’s silly to expect the average college athelete to devote the same level of energy to their schoolwork as a more mundane student, right? High-profile athletics takes passion, dedication and time, and if college teams want to compete, they have to make sacrifices.

But this begs the question: why do colleges want to compete so badly? Obvious answer – big athletics equals big money (UConn knows about that, too). Money can translate into high-profile academic gains, and so the admittance of lower-scoring students might just be a pill colleges have to swallow.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t really help the diligent students who get shoved out of their first-pick school because another, academically inferior candidate happened to have a good passing arm. And arguing that minority athletes tend to graduate more often than non-minority athletes, as Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt insists, doesn’t hold any water – honestly, what message does that send to minority students? You can succeed in the biased, loaded world of mainstream academia, but only if you Be Like Mike?

And what do those sacrifices mean for the college world as a whole? Ultimately, I don’t think lowering academic standards to boost athletic ones is a fair trade for the American educational system. The former president of the University of Florida complains that “We go out on the field and get beaten by people we couldn’t admit.” Well, as Americans, we’re gonna go out into the world and get beaten by the people we wouldn’t admit – bright, creative, well-educated individuals who would have found their college spots taken by athletes, and entire departments of geniuses who got their funding cut because they couldn’t sell Gatorade.

Athletics can’t be responsible for our national brain drain alone, but they’re sure not helping.

I dunno. Am I pulling a Merlin, complaining pointlessly about “games-mania”? Is this just the dodgeball welts talking? I’m not hating on athletics, and I’m sure that the average college philosophy (or my very own English, even) department isn’t very useful on the world stage, either. But with numbers like these coming out – though I know that SATs can be way off the mark – is it time for a cultural re-focusing? Help me out, here.

Strange, silly and awkward things overheard on campus this week:

- A lanky blonde man leans against a doorway, talking to a short-haired brunette.

“She’s really… nice, you know?” He shakes his head. “I mean, I just wanted someone to care about.”

“But a freshman?” she asks, feigning surprise. “Really!“

“Yeah. It was like fishing with dynamite.”

- Two grizzled, swarthy males stand in the dining hall.

“Man, I can’t believe there aren’t any forks,” remarks one, his thick lower lip turned in a pout. He moves one finger toward his collar unconsciously.

His friend looks sadly at the empty racks. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t even know anyone who uses spoons.”

- Across the dining hall, a guy stands up and starts singing “I’ll Make A Man Out Of You” from Mulan . About three quarters of the table joins in within seconds. One other guy grabs his tray, gets up and stalks away. “I thought we were done with this,” he says, darkly.

- Down the hallway, a pink-faced man is tying a lumpy plastic bag to a door. As I pass by, he looks up and smiles conspiratorially.

“It’s ladybugs,” he says.

- A punky blonde girl and redhaired boy – they look like a couple – are sitting with some others at a cafe table.

“But honestly,” says the boy, looking around the table. “Who sleeps with freshmen?”

As he looks back at the girl, she’s pointing straight at him. He shrugs.

- A professor, standing at the head of a class on prejudice and discrimination:

“Entries should be one page minimum, 12 point font. And please don’t write these drunk.”

“But what if you’re out drinking and someone says something racist?” asks a student in the back. “And you just have to write about it, but you won’t remember in the morning?”

The professor thinks about it for a minute. “Then I would take notes,” she says.

(Incidentally, the same professor suggested “gatorade and rice” as the best hangover cure.)

- Outside a dorm, three guys are sitting on the steps. They look sad about something

“Man, this sucks, dude, I’m so hungry.”

“Yeah,” says another. The smell of marijuana is thick in the air.

“F*ckin’ sucks,” the third says, mournfully.

At their feet, Lucky Charms are scattered about the steps.