1. Check the weather every day, but NOT on your weather app! Every morning, the first thing I do after I wake up is check the weather app on my iPhone and dress accordingly. By midday, however, I am always freezing/sweating/soaking wet. The weather app is literally never right. Instead of relying on it, check weather.com or just google Ann Arbor weather for a more accurate forecast of what’s to come in the day!
2. Layer up! The most important thing I’ve learned to do since coming to Michigan is layering. The worst thing about the winter is that your walk to and from places is brutally freezing, but the inside of every building is a sauna. You have to layer to avoid the misery of getting frostbite on your walk to class, or sweating through a 2-hour lecture.
3. Invest in texting gloves. Walks around campus are prime-time to call my mom, scroll through my e-mails, or FaceTime my brother (otherwise known as making him show me my dogs at home). In the dead of winter, it’s too cold to take your hands out of your pockets to text, and too hard to text with big gloves on. Texting gloves will end up being the thing you use the most.
4. Get a Happy Lamp. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a real thing. When every day is cold and gray, it’s easy to feel under the weather and a little sad. Happy lamps will help you keep your focus and feel happy even if you hate the cold.
5. Enjoy fun winter activities! Snowy, cold weather isn’t all sad news! Winter brings with it some of the best activities of the year: playing in the snow, making hot chocolate, watching Christmas movies, and so many more! These are the gems of winter that make us secretly love the cold.
Images courtesy of Fox5, Song of Style, the Wirecutter, Amazon.com, and girlsdoski.com.