Cougars are known to spend the winter months feeding and sleeping in an effort to keep themselves sustained and survive in the adverse weather.

In the slightly less wild habitat that is WSU, cougars are apparently still expected to attend classes in addition to tending to other essential necessities, despite the harsh conditions.

While classes offer invaluable intellectual stimulation and you know are a quintessential part of helping one get a job someday, attending them in the colder months can be daunting.

As we (and our calves) are explicitly aware, WSU is essentially famous for its geographical inclination toward … well inclines.

It is one of the few schools one can go to where you can honestly tell your grandchildren that you walked to school everyday uphill both ways. And while it’s all fun and fantastic soleus muscles in the warmer seasons, in the winter months it can be downright treacherous.

Due to the fact that the entire campus of WSU was built upon a terrain that basically feels like a poorly played game of Tetris, it is understandable if there are a couple slips and falls in the colder seasons.

So prepare, WSU.

Prepare for it to become suddenly easy to tell who is from California.

Prepare for the hailstorm-entering, potentially tailbone-splintering storms to come. Exercise caution and kindness this winter.

Know your terrain. Make sure you are familiar with your routes to class (hopefully at this point you have walked them at least a couple of times) and exercise extreme caution in areas that are particularly steep or not well traversed. Be careful indoors, as well. Too many times students forget that their shoes are still wet and slip on the linoleum in Todd Auditorium.

Prepare to become very adept at holding back inappropriate laughter as campus becomes little more than a stylized slip ‘n slide, which leads us to a very relevant topic of discussion this time of year: Winter Etiquette.

While it is unanimously agreed that falling people are hilarious, it is both morally and legally wrong to ridicule/videotape the gravity-impaired and making no effort to assist them.

Please extend the gloved hand before the Go Pro when witnessing a fellow Coug get a face-full of winter wonderland.