Ten tips for a successful Winter Carnival

9. Wear your black North Face fleece.In fact, wear all your black North Face fleeces. The in­tro­duc­tion of the cam­pus List­serv has vastly de­pleted the avail­abil­ity of cam­pus lists, and, as such, my inbox is achingly de­void of that par­tic­u­lar, in­fa­mous mis­sive ask­ing for the re­turn of a (stu­pidly) worn uniden­ti­fi­able black jacket. '15s may not have even know what a black North Face fleece blitz is! Lose your jack­ets, for God’s sake keep your car keys, pass­port and other ill-con­ceived items in there and re­vive this valiant blitz be­cause, y’know, “lest the old tra­di­tions fail” and all that.

8. '12s: BUY YOUR CAR­NI­VAL SHWAG.T-shirts. Posters. Every­thing. This is your last Car­ni­val, so you might as well at­tach some ma­te­r­ial nos­tal­gia to it. Every­body else: Don’t buy Car­ni­val stuff. You will ac­cu­mu­late enough crap through­out your time in col­lege.

7. Don’t be mad when cli­mate change once again foils the win­ter sculp­ture plans and turns it into some­thing vaguely rem­i­nis­cent of the fe­male anatomy,a la 2009. In­stead, take a nice long drive in your gas-guz­zling SUV and be grate­ful they de­cided to sculpt a cup­cake rather than, say, Fire­tower.

6. Lock your doors.I can­not em­pha­size this enough. Do it be­cause you don’t want to have to spend Sun­day ex­plain­ing to your par­ents why you need sev­eral thou­sand dol­lars for a new com­puter so you can do that home­work you’ve pro­cras­ti­nated since Wednes­day. Strange alumni will be here, strange friends from other schools, strange peo­ple from the real world in sur­round­ing New Eng­land. All sorts of peo­ple with ques­tion­able mo­tives flock to cam­pus, know­ing that there will be enough un­fa­mil­iar faces out and about for them to blend in while they en­gage in their less-than-le­gal pur­suits. Dur­ing my fresh­man year, a crafty crim­i­nal took ad­van­tage of a big week­end and made off with two lap­tops, sev­eral iPods and cash from my and my floor­mates’ rooms. LOCK. YOUR. DOORS.

5. Drink water. Eat food. Water: Key­stone. Food: (only) EBAs.As al­ways, take care of your­self and your body, and take care of oth­ers around you.

4. Go to the Ski Team Tail­gate.(Hi, Cor­rinne!)

3. Read The D’s re­view of old Car­ni­val tra­di­tions.(Hi, The D). It’s nice to know why we make such a big deal out of this week­end.

2. Re­mem­ber where you put your jacket, gloves and hat!It’s going to be -6F on Sat­ur­day — yikes!

1. PACE YOUR­SELF.We have four long days ahead of our­selves, and no­body likes a quit­ter.