Christmas as a college student is not all cookies and carols, let me tell you.
I have eaten quite a few waxy chocolates from my advent calendar, Mariah Carey is on the radio and the old stop motion Christmas movies are on television nightly. The holiday season has been my favorite time of the year for the last 18 years, but this year is quite different.
In high school, I lived for the last day of school before we dismissed for winter break, enjoying every minute of the days leading up to the twenty-fifth. Even just last year, I could not wait for the long days and nights with my friends, Christmas parties, and spending every last dime of my gift cards I received before school resumed; there was so much to look forward to.
While all of that is still just as exciting, there is the tiniest added level of dread to this holiday season; going home to Rocky River and living my old life is not exactly how I would like to spend the next 30 days. I have gotten so used to my new “home” that Rocky River just does not quite feel the same anymore. Typing up this article while I sit in my perfect, little, holiday-decorated dorm room that I call home, I am wishing I had the money to pay to live in it during the break, and not have to leave for the holiday. I have made my own little sanctuary here, something I have never had before.
Christmas, as a college student, means that I have to go back to a town where I will bump into everyone from high school and see them all on Snapchat, partying together, so happy to be back in their bubble, where they all feel they belong. I was already uninterested in a majority of these people for the last four years, but I finally thought I was done with them. I thought that after graduation that chapter was over and those people were gone until our class reunions. I definitely forgot about winter and summer break.
The holidays are especially strange for college students because the friends that we would actually want to spend Christmas and New Year’s with have to go back to their hometowns too. I will not get to see my new best friends for a month and that in itself is dreadful.
For one thing, I cannot wait to spend a month with my family; I miss being with them every day and we are a great team together. There is no such thing as having a bad time when I am with them. But if I could make one slight adjustment and move all of my family to downtown Cleveland and into my dorm room for the duration of the break, that would be the only gift I need this year. I know that the second I see my parents, my brother and my pets, I will be happy to be home; at the same time, I know that on around day 10 I will be missing my school quite a lot.
‘Tis the season to be conflicted between school and home. It is a weird feeling, but ultimately I am blessed to have two places that I call home.
