Things to do

People like to ask if there's anything to do around here. Sometimes I think students exhaust the options closest to campus. How many times can you go to Mars Cafe before it gets old? Seriously. The other problem is that other activities aren't within walking distance, leaving those without a car at a disadvantage, or they cost money students can't afford to spend.

One option that I think goes overlooked is volunteering. Stay with me, here.

You don't have to be in some sort of organization to do community service. Independent people do community service all the time. I've met dozens of people who get their family together and volunteer "just because." And I think that's totally cool - maybe it's even better in some ways because it's absolutely not required of you to do it.

You can do and see some seriously cool stuff when you volunteer. Here's one of the best parts - it's free. If you volunteer at a place that would normally charge admission, you're going to get in for free. Who is going to make a volunteer pay? Plus, you can stumble on some pretty awesome stuff you never would have thought of before.

For example, I volunteered at the Drake booth for the Iowa State Fair. I got in for free because I was a volunteer, I parked for free (so far I've saved a total of like 15 bucks), I spend a couple of hours at the Drake booth giving little kids bulldog tattoos and then met up with some friends and spent the rest of the day at the fair.

It's easy enough to find volunteering opportunities. There are massive searching sites like volunteermatch.com that sort opportunities by category so you can find something you'd like to do. You'll probably be able to get a group of friends together to go do it with you, too.

So you're helping give something back to the community, doing something fun, and not spending any money doing it. Sounds like a win-win to me.