Face it. Even if your initial perception of university life is like some sort of party oasis – a Girls (or Guys) Gone Wild ad run amok – where beer flows like water and people willingly get naked at your command, there isn’t much to do on the weekends. The truth of the matter is, if you don’t take the time to think about what to do, you’re doomed to sitting around your room updating your MySpace profile.

Don’t fret, we’re here to help. We’ve taken the time you would’ve spent playing “Halo” or watching reruns of “Next” to channel it into something actually fun. So, when’s the last time you played a floorwide mini-golf course?

1. Hang ten with mattress surfing

You don’t have to live on the coast to appreciate the thrill of the surfer lifestyle. Take your dorm mattress, put on your nicest board shorts and head to the top floor of a staircase in your building. Challenge your friends to fastest time down to the bottom floor, or have them all hop on. The best thing about this form of surfing: no suntan necessary, unless you want to earn style points.

2. Brew your own moonshine just like grandpa used to make

Who needs the hassle of going to the liquor store when you can make your own gasoline-grade alcohol right in your room? Following “The Alaskan Bootlegger’s Bible” – which can be bought at Happymountain.net – you can make Everclear look like a wine cooler. Just be careful – being blind and paralyzed is a total mood killer.

3. Be the Olympian with the dorm-bed high jump

You may never have an opportunity to win a gold medal in your life, but dorm-bed high jumping may be the closest thing to it. Put a pair of beds out in the hallway, have two people hold a pole between them and attempt to catapult yourself and top your friends. Just don’t fall on your head, OK?

4. Construct a duct tape mural of epic proportions

Those dorm room walls can look derelict without a little dressing up, and your “Pulp Fiction” or Johnny Depp posters are going down in the Cliche Dorm Room Hall of Fame. A little art will make your place stand out like a modern art exhibit. Take duct tape – the most useful thing on the planet – and cover your walls. Then, use markers, paint or whatever else you have laying around and your abode will turn into a masterpiece in no time.

5. Get down and dirty with full-contact hallway football

Sure, the dorms have open fields where you can flex your gridiron muscle, but isn’t it more fun to tackle someone who has no chance of getting past you? If you don’t own a helmet, use a garbage can to mix things up a bit. The blows are more exciting when you don’t know when you’re getting hit.

6. Twist and shout at an MU fountain beach party

Although it will get the cops called on you, nothing else feels like you’re at a vintage ’50s clambake than when you’re in your bikini top and swatting a beach ball in front of the Memorial Union. For added fun, find your hairiest friend, dress them up like “Anchorman” Ron Burgundy and have them hit on innocent bystanders.

7. Impress the king with a deadly game of chair jousting

Chair jousting is your opportunity to experience the Middle Ages in a highly inaccurate way. Find a pole, wooden board, cardboard tube or whatever else you can scrounge up for your knightly weapon, then use desk chairs to duel for pride and honor. The first person who falls off loses.

8. Construct a giant fort that would make Buckingham Palace blush

There is no doubt about it: Forts are the sweetest things on the planet. Show up your kindergarten cousin and erect a fort throughout your entire room, including a full-sized ball pit. It’ll be like a McDonald’s PlayPlace but without all the snot-nosed kids.

9. Challenge yourself to a ramen-eating contest

Ramen is one of those “foods” – used loosely – that you can actually construct an igloo out of for a dollar.

To play this game, find two of the biggest bowls you can, fill them with ramen and take on a friend in either a timed race or whoever-spews-spicy-vegetable-all-over-your-couch-first race.

10. Play a rousing game of Brandyland

The greatest game the world has ever known, Brandyland, starts off peachy and usually ends up pukey.

To see it for yourself, go to Iowastatedaily.com and search for Brandyland in the search box.

For those who can’t handle the intoxicating fun, substitute liquor for a disgusting food or condiment of your choice. Our choice: Crisco.

11. Get into a “Scarface” slap fight

You talkin’ to me? “Scarface,” the king of movie swearfests, also makes for one of the best excuses to beat up your friends. Gather up closest pals and each time Tony Montana drops an F-bomb, get into a hardcore slap fight.

12. Put up a dorm door barricade

All right, so it isn’t exactly fire-code appropriate, but the comedy value is absolute gold.

Take all the furniture on your floor’s den and stack it up against the door of your unsuspecting victim. When he or she goes to – you know – actually do something useful with his or her time, he or she will see the folly of not leaving the room door open.

13. Play a little “air horn

surprise”

Made popular by “Jackass,” Iowa State’s abundant foliage makes for the perfect hideout to pull a little air horn terror.

Place yourself in a bush, wait for your victim to walk by and run in fear when they charge at you angrily. An adrenaline rush is always a good time.

14. Pen your name with Pokey Stix grease

The pinnacle of ISU cuisine, Gumby’s Pokey Stix are a time-honored tradition of delicious greasiness.

For those watching their caloric intake, don’t wring out the Pokey juice.

Instead, be your own Picasso on a piece of white construction paper.

In no time you’ll be wearing a beret and a fruity mustache.

15. Relive your childhood with Central Campus hide-and-seek

We have a big, beautiful campus, and not playing hide-and-seek on it would be a crime against humanity.

To put a college spin on it, rip off your clothes and let it all hang out – it makes tagging all the more interesting.

16. Put on your diving cap for a Lake LaVerne swimming race

You know what they say, you aren’t a true Iowa Stater until you’ve swam around Lake LaVerne – twice. Well, at least it’s something like that.

After you’ve had all your vaccinations, compete to see who can swim across LaVerne and back the fastest.

Afterwards, go to student health for a full physical. It never hurts to be safe.

17. Be Happy Gilmore with a floorwide mini-golf course

Why should you have to pay for a round of mini golf when you can bring it into your home?

Set up a bunch of identical cups around your entire floor, then prop up furniture and cardboard and create the mini-golf course of your dreams.

A windmill made of Mountain Dew cans is within your reach.

18. Crawl through the trenches in a valiant fruit-war food fight

Although you grab a grocery cart full of fruit each time you leave the dining center, chances are you rarely eat it all. Put Mother Nature to good use by stocking up on oranges and bananas – or apples, if you’re a sadist – and battling your friends in a fruit fight. Lobbing produce never felt so good.

19. Keep your head above water as you raft down College Creek

Colorado is too far away for whitewater rafting to be a weekend activity. Bring the thrills of nearly drowning home by buying a cheap Wal-Mart raft, waiting for a heavy rain and fighting the rapids of College Creek. A word of advice, however: Too many people and the raft will tear and bottom out.

20. Experience Canada with the maple-syrup-bonging contest

In a perfect world, Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth would live in a cottage with you and make you pancakes all day.

But for those who want something more on the wild side – and a really nasty hangover – bust out your beer bong and see who can chug syrup the fastest. Chances are you’ll get queasy the next time you see an IHOP.

21. Be a techno-assassin with CD ninja stars

Remember when you used to get a dump truck full of AOL CDs sent to your house? Well, chances are there is still a treasure trove of them left in your room from a past student somewhere. Put them to good use by dressing in all black, sneaking about your dorm and chucking unsuspecting victims with a shot to the jugular. They’ll never know what hit them.

22. Sweat like a swine in a piggyback MU-parking-garage race

Three-legged races and getting dizzy with baseball bats are so passe. With piggyback racing in the Memorial Union, who needs the Iron Man competition? Even if you collapse before you make it to the top, challenge your friends to see who can take the heat. Oh – just be sure not to get run over. That’d be bad.

23. Draw your pistols in a full-blown Nerf gun shoot-out

Who said adults can’t play with foam dart guns? Go shopping for the cheapest Nerf guns you can find, set up cardboard boxes for cover, put on your finest bolo and chaps and let the bullets rip. A 20-gallon cowboy hat is a welcome addition, as it gives you ample storage for more darts.

24. Pedal your street musicianship and make some quick cash

Your delicate rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” may make the ladies swoon, but how will you take them out with no cash? Set up your instrument in a busy area – think Welch Avenue – and belt out those tunes. Sure, college students are poor, but with a little charisma you’ll be making gyro money in no time.

25. Play dorm Plinko – no Bob Barker necessary

Making a full-size replica of “The Price is Right” wheel is way too much work. However, the old-school games on the show are a cinch to recreate. Arrange garbage cans next to each other below the fire escape of your building and put point values on each. Challenge your friends to score the most points by dropping a ball with expert precision. Unfortunately, no cash and prizes await.