You just finished buying an art history book from the bookstore for $129, and since you’re paying your own way through school, you’re not the most excited student right now. Believe me, I know what you’re thinking: “I’m broke. This sucks so bad.”

Then, while you’re deciding what you feel like eating for lunch, your appetite slowly turns to nausea as you realize that you haven’t even bought your parking pass yet, which is another $144 you have to spend.

As you’re heavily shuffling your feet out of the Matador complex, you grab the Daily Sundial so that you have something informative to read on your way to parking services and you discover a secret.

Here it is. I’ll make it short and sweet because I know that you’re dying to go home and read your new art book with all the cool pictures inside.

You don’t need a parking pass to survive at CSUN.

With a little more planning ahead, you can start everyday at CSUN this semester without any stress.

There is plenty of parking on side streets around the campus that would make it possible to park your car for long periods of time. You just have to plan to leave home a little sooner.

With the exception of maybe one day at most devoted to the street-sweeping gods, these spots are safe to park at for hours at a time and most of them have no restrictions at all.

Hassle-free parking can be found on the north and south sides of Nordhoff Street, between Zelzah Street and Reseda Boulevard. Students can also park on the side streets of Nordhoff, with many secret spots nestled on streets all the way up to Halstead and down past Parthenia. In fact, CSUN owns parking structures farther away than some rather convenient free spots around campus, and the ones that are a few blocks away are still worth it. You can exercise on your way to school, killing two birds with one stone.

Christina Villalobos, community relations officer for campus police, also encourages students to park in spots that are farther away from campus.

“Students have unrealistic expectations for parking,” Villalobos said. “Parking in the first row closest to the building of your class is not realistic.”

This will be especially true for the first few weeks of class, with CSUN freshmen arriving to their classes less than 60 minutes before they start and expecting to find parking within a mile of their classroom.

“I don’t even bother with parking anymore in the structures” said Ariel Galura, a CSUN student now in his senior year. “If I don’t carpool with my friend than I park off campus and skateboard to class.”

There are thousands more students than parking spaces, so you might as well take my advice and use parking in the structures for emergency situations only. Keep in mind that the price of daily passes will increase from $4 to $5 this semester, which is just one more reason you should take my advice.