promotional gifts
Being in college is great. Being a college student on campus brings you back to being a kid in a candy store. Everywhere you turn people are pointing out things you want. At my school we have "the scramble light" which is basically a corner where people stand to get your attention about anything from a concert their band is putting on to a free pizza to different theatrical acts going on about new stores opening up or classes. They give out promotional gifts like pens for different banks that want students to sign up for checking accounts or piggy banks. You get promotional items like coupons for free pizza with your school ID. You could feed yourself for a week sometimes with all the promotions going on at the scramble light. Between a free medium pizza coupon and a two dollars off coupon for a 3 dollar sub there is no reason you shouldn't have money to go out on the weekends. The promotional products are meant to keep students coming back for more but in some cases like a pizza hut coupon, you can get scammed and be turned off to coming back or stay far from the scramble light. One coupon that my roommate and I fell for was a free medium pizza with your school ID. We brought our coupon with our ID's and were told to wait in a line that lasted almost 40 minutes. Only to be told that if you want the pizza you had to sign up for a credit card and be approved. Some students stayed, only to find out that half of them were denied and the other half of the students left for fear of identity theft.
Although that was a bad experience, there are many that really do help students out. Some bookstores promote savings cards which help you earn points for your books throughout the years which can really add up for students. Companies know what students need and are promoting the right way to meet both the students and companies needs. Whether you get a t-shirt from the bookstore for buying eight hundred dollars in books (yay another school t-shirt, just what we need) or a pencil from the library telling you to read more, you'll find as you're packing your stuff to go home for the summer that these items really do creep up on you.