Join the Campus Contest?

karen lorraine is hosting a new contest! The premise is building a college campus. This fits in quite nicely with one of my own projects, so I am highly considering entering. I've got some reservations about it though. The first round is building a dorm, it's pretty basic and a great place to start. The biggest problem with it though, is how small it is! It's only 2 floors and a tiny footprint at that, my other two dorms are MUCH larger. I've managed to stuff 8 sims into this tiny dorm, but my Dabney dorm could technically house 32, and Calhoun (shown below) would be able to hold 48 if I furnished all the floors. The other big issues is she is requiring that your university be themed either arts, science, or sports. The university I'm working on constructing has a very nice blend of all of those! Based on the buildings she is going to have us make, I've ruled out the sciences. From there though, it looks like we will have choices for the remaining 5 rounds:

• Library (sciency)
  
• One-Stop Shop
• Coffee Shop
• Park* this would be awesome!
• House (dull)
  
• Performing Venue (artsy) ooh this!
  
• Art Gallery (artsy)
  
• Fitness Center* ✓
• Bar* ✓
• Games Room*

I have some pretty big visions for my hood. The idea behind my university is actually having the college classroom buildings, so I'll have a large art college, a music college, a teaching hospital, and *very* big sports complexes. I don't really have some of these tinier spaces included, but I really ought to, as they add character. If the shells for the lots aren't big enough, I won't be able to do the Music Hall or Art College the way I want to.

I'm leaning more toward the sporty and generic stuff right now because I know that's my real weakness in the first place, and I can probably get away with doing those on these smaller lots. Maybe that should be my plan. Purposely pick the weakest link and use this to make it stronger.

Hacks You'd Like to See Thread

I've been following the Hacks You'd Like to See thread, and its chock full of great little mods. Many are doable, but some are more blue sky. I went through and collected all the ones that interested me, even if they weren't immediately achievable, and put them into a working document. I sorted it by categories and saw some common themes emerging. While a large number of them are things that I will never get around to even trying, some of them are short and simple enough that I could bust them out if I had a few spare minutes and remembered about them.

Here's my larger document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aS6xgbsCY8Q33YPxh_WkERtH7pWf4PNKN-Fc9-BPCoQ/edit?usp=sharing

And the shorter list for projects I might want to tackle are:

Taking off Work (without having to fake being sick, and also maybe for longer to raise kids)
Baby Showers (pregger ladies can't go anywhere anyways, bring her friends to her)
Beach Activities Season Restrictions (thank you MSD!)
Cintique for doing art on comp
Different height foundations and stages to make split staircases (1/2 and 3/4)
Non-romantic classic dance (for weddings and such)
Supernatural Wants and Fears (lauratje86 was working on it with me, but I think she hit a snag)
Mental Illness & Disease (look for another post on that subject later)
More and Random Deaths (look for another post on that subject later)

If you read the whole thing you will see some other topics I've already expressed an interest in working on, like smaller driveways and a better sky. I copied the info down because its always helpful to have more than one perspective.