Introductory Note: This list ended up being much longer than I imagined it would be. Once I got going, I realized just how many things I would’ve wanted to know when I first set foot on campus. Rather than leave anything out, I'm dividing up the tips. Here's a Table of Contents for this article as well as the upcoming article for next week so you can find the information that may be useful to you. Each section has a subheading in bold to help you navigate this list.

Welcome to the F&Mily and feel free to reach out with any questions that aren’t addressed here!

Topics Covered in this Article:

1. Why You Can't Survive Without Reading Your Emails

2. Doing Laundry

3. Buying Books

4. Banks & ATMs

5. Volunteering

6. Navigating Food on Campus

7. Printing and Technology Resources

What You'll Find in Next Week's Article

(Available Online On of After July 4)

1. Understanding Your Student Portal and the Most Important Links You'll Need

2. Counseling, Health Services, and Insurance

3. Time Management and What to Do After Class

4. Finding Clubs

5. Registration Tips

6. Using Your House Advisors, Deans, and Dons

7. Public Safety and the LiveSafe App

Tip #1: READ. YOUR. EMAIL.

You will always wake up to 10+ emails in your inbox. Always. And some of them are really important! Not checking your email for more than a day is like losing touch with everything going on around campus. Seriously. Link your email to your phone, make your email your homepage, do whatever you need to do. Don’t be out of the loop.

Tip #2: Laundry

Never do laundry on a Sunday! Everyone does laundry on Sundays and there is a high risk of having someone else pull your clothes out of the washer and dump it anywhere or pull it out of the dryer before it's done (please don't be that person), or you may not find any machines available. The most convenient times to do laundry are weekday mornings/early afternoon while most people are in class or Friday and Saturday nights when everyone is out. If there's a break coming up, don't wait til the last minute to do laundry... everyone does, and you'll run into the aforementioned issues.

Other quick tips: if you're using Tide Pods or similar products, put them inside the washing machine with your clothes, NOT the normal pocket for detergent. The plastic will melt and ruin the machine. If you're using detergent, make sure you don't overdo it. Out-of-order machines are no fun for anyone. Once you start the dryer, you can't restart it until time runs out, so if you take out a load of laundry with 6 minutes left on the machine, you (or the next person) will have to wait out those 6 minutes before starting another cycle.

BE CONSIDERATE. Living in a dorm means sharing common spaces, and you wouldn't want anyone else to touch or move your laundry, steal your socks, or flood your laundry room. Don't do it to anyone else.

Tip #3: Buying Books

When you buy books from the bookstore, you can either order online and pick up your order when it's ready, or you can go to the bookstore and buy them in person. Ordering online is easier, and you won't be standing in line for an hour with everyone else rushing to buy books before classes start BUT make sure you understand that while the bookstore does their best to fulfill your order, you might not get all the books you need or the version you selected. For example, if you order all your books "rent used," the cheapest option, and the bookstore doesn't have any more "rent used" of whatever book you ordered, they will fill your order with the next best option: "rent new." If there's no "rent new" books available, they'll use "buy used," and if that's not available, "buy new." This means the total price listed when you place your order might not be the actual price you have to pay when you pick up your order. You can always cancel your order, but it helps to be aware of this ahead of time.

Even if you don't buy your books from the bookstore, you can enter your class codes on the website to access your reading list for those courses. This is how you will know what books you need before classes start, and that buys you time to search for your most cost-effective options before crunch time.

Other options for buying books: use websites like Chegg or rent textbooks on Amazon; it's not always cheaper than the bookstore price, but it often is. You can also buy used books from other students. There are "buy and sell" Facebook pages to help you share your info about what you're looking to buy, and this is the best way to negotiate prices.

Tip #4: Banks and ATMs

There is an ATM in the basement of the College Center, but there is a fee for taking out cash. There is also an ATM across the street at College Corner; that ATM is Wells Fargo, so if you have a Wells Fargo account, there is no fee for withdrawing money. The closest bank is also Wells Fargo (there is one at Park City Mall and another in the same shopping center as the closest Giant and Walmart, which you can get to on the Lancaster Loop. More info on the Loop under Tip 6), so if you don't have a Wells Fargo account, it may be convenient to switch.

Tip #5: Volunteering

Volunteering is a great way to get involved in the Lancaster community. It's nice to get off campus every once in a while and volunteering is a good way to get experience doing something you're interested in while working towards a good cause. For help finding volunteer opportunities, visit the Ware Institute for Civic Engagement. Find their webpage here. It's a valuable resource that can help connect you to everything Lancaster has to offer!

Tip #6: Meal Plans, Options, and Going Off-Campus

Priority #1: food. Let’s start with the meal plan. Every first-year has the same meal plan and you have enough swipes to last you all year, but only if you don't eat three meals a day. Fear not; there are solutions to this problem. Scroll down for more.

Here are your on-campus options:

Dining Hall: gives you the most bang for your buck because there are more options (gluten-free, kosher, salads, sandwiches, bagels, and whatever else has been prepared for that day), but it’s the most inconvenient because they’re only open during certain hours. And if you get there after the football team gets out of practice, you can just forget about finding anything good left over.

College Center: this is the most convenient because it’s open all day and into the night, but there are less options: Salsa Rico (quesadillas, burritos, burrito bowls), Horseshoe Café (pizza, pasta, sandwiches), and ice cream. Also important to note: almost everything in the College Center requires using flex in addition to a meal swipe.

Zime: great for coffee, pastries, parfaits, breakfast sandwiches, lunch sandwiches, and soup. The hours aren’t as convenient as the College Center, but more so than the Dining Hall.

Solutions to Running Out of Swipes or Getting Bored of Campus Food

Solution 1: Flex dollars. This is money you can use at any campus food venue without using your swipes. Note of caution—don’t use up a meal swipe for coffee or a cookie. Use flex. However, it disappears faster than you think, so ask the person ringing you up to check what you have left on your meal plan every once in a while. You’ll get a receipt with the number of swipes and flex you have left.

Solution 2: Eating off campus. Lancaster has some pretty awesome food. If you make your way downtown on First Fridays (the first Friday of every month, when there's food, music, and open art galleries everywhere), you can take advantage of occasional dinner specials. Even places like Aussie and the Fox (delicious food, but harsh on your wallet) sometimes have sweet deals…like a steak dinner for $10.

There’s also a Wendy’s, a Waffle House, a Subway, and an awesome Mexican restaurant (El Pueblito) right next to campus; College Corner bagel shop, Oka Asian Fusioon restaurant, and Fresh Farms café across the street; and Campus Grille, Pita Pit, Mean Cup, and The Fridge just down Harrisburg Ave.

The Lancaster Central Market is open on Tuesdays and Fridays from 6 AM to 4 PM and Saturdays from 6 AM to 2 PM. You can always count on Central Market for locally grown fruits, veggies, meat, and dairy products as well as some ready-made food—anything from Greek food to bagel sandwiches. For more info, click here.

The Lancaster Loop goes to Giant supermarket and Walmart on Saturdays. The Loop runs from 10 AM to 3 PM on Saturday, starting the route every 40 minutes. The Loop also runs Saturday evenings and on Fridays. Check their schedule here to find out where else the Loop can take you. It can be a nice change of pace to go grocery shopping and make yourself a meal in any one of the College House kitchens—but make sure you’re familiar with your house’s policy on kitchen use (whether or not you need to reserve the kitchen, how to reserve it, cleaning up after yourself, etc.).

Solution 3: free food! You’d be surprised how many free food events there are on campus. For starters, every house has free coffee and tea—just locate the Keurig machine and K-cups. Each house also has bagel breakfast (just make sure you know what day your house hosts it!) and there are Sunday Night Sundae events—who doesn’t love free ice cream?

Common Hour, held every Thursday from 11:30 AM to 12:35 PM, aside from being a great educational opportunity, featuring a wide range of speakers and topics that may interest you (find the schedule online here), there's always free fruits and pizza (including gluten free)! Common Hour is always held in Mayser Gymnasium.

Make sure you double check all those email blasts—there are often free food events, such as open forums help by the Diplomatic Congress, that you can attend. As a rising senior who didn’t have a meal plan last year, I can assure you that it is entirely possible to nourish yourself on free food and $1 cereal and Ramen noodles from the CVS across the street.

Tip #7: Printing & Information Technology

Printing is available all around campus, but it does cost you. To print in black & white, it’s 4 cents per page (unless you print double-sided; then it’s 7 cents for one sheet of paper), and to print in color, it’s 10 cents per page.

Printers are located in the following places:

--Innovation Zone (basement floor of Patricia E. Harris building, which is located next to the College Center)
--Either of the two libraries
--Next to the information desk at the College Center
--Zime
--The first floor of the following academic buildings: Stager, Life Sciences & Philosophy, and Hackman.

For a map of campus to help you locate these buildings, click here. You’ll also receive a map during orientation. You can log into a printer by using your fob, so try not to lose it!

If you lose your keys and/or your fob at any time, call or visit Public Safety to get back into your room or building if you've been locked out—find their number and location here. They will unlock your room once per year for free. If you call them to let you into your room more than once, you'll be charged a $10 fee for each lock out. You can call Facilities and Operations or submit a work order/key request online here (scroll down to find the request form on the right-hand side) to get a replacement key and/or fob. A replacement key is $10 and a replacement fob is $50.

If you’re using Google Chrome and printing from Google Drive, your personal device (computer or smartphone) will recognize the PaperCut program, which can send your document to any printer on campus. If you’re using a campus computer in the library or the Innovation Zone, you can connect to PaperCut from any Microsoft program, meaning you don’t have to print from Google Drive. After you send a document to the printer, it will be stored for 12 hours and you can find any printer on campus, pull out your fob, and print. Simple. If a document doesn’t print, you will not be charged. If for whatever reason you need a refund, contact the Information Technology Services Help Desk—find their number and location here.

ITS offers much more than just printing, however, and you can find information on all of those things on the F&M website. You may want to reserve the 3D printer or use the poster printer in Shadek-Fackenthal Library. You may want to borrow a laptop or computer charger from the Technology Lending Center; you can do that here. There are also instructions for different services you might like to use; you can find that here. Take advantage of everything you have access to!

Please offer your feedback if you have questions you want answered in next week's article, or if there is more specific information that would have been helpful in this article. Stay tuned for more tips on navigating F&M life!