"How are your grades?"

"Do you work anywhere?"

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

"What are your plans after graduation?"

Let's face it these are all questions we wish to avoid from grandparents, Great Aunt Sue, or nosy Aunt Karen. Thanksgiving is an awkward time of year for any young adult. We are gone all year working out butts off at college trying to make something of our lives. We feel the stress of exams and projects. We are trying to figure out who we are and stay involved in the community. Yet we have to stay in shape and maintain a social life of some sort. We also learn to survive on microwave meals and the awful cafeteria food.

When we come home from college for Thanksgiving all we can think about is being surrounded by family and stuffing our faces with food that wasn't frozen ten minutes ago. Instead we are faced with the countless questions of where we see our future going. They are all the same questions too, which let's face it, haven't changed since last year. While we are all thankful to get to see our family we just wish they would stay out of our personal lives.

That's why I like Friendsgiving just a little more than Thanksgiving. What's Friendsgiving you may ask? Well it's you and all of your friends who you normally hang around gathering for a meal that you try not to screw up. It doesn't come with any of the awkward questions with the life updates because let's face it, these people are the one's who know your day to day life.

Friendsgiving is the time when we all gather with our favorite Thanksgiving dishes that our mothers or grandmothers taught us to make. However, that also comes with many calls home to make sure you don't screw it up. Friendsgiving is when we have to google how to carve a turkey and wondering if it's cooked all the way through. (Thank God for Youtube.)

Then once we are all done shoving our faces full of food that we are sitting in a food coma, we gather for our favorite drinking games. You form teams and know it's going to get super competitive. You all try to see who can get the most drunk. It's not awkward or scary though because you are surrounded by friends that love you in a safe place. It's waking up in the morning and realize that you went through 8 bottles of wine and way too many Jell-O shots to count. Yet you know you're welcome to sleep your hangover off as long as you want. You also get to have breakfast with same people reminiscing about the previous night of laughter and inside jokes to laugh a lifetime.

Friendsgiving teaches you how to be thankful for the people who know your in's and out's of your daily life. These are the people who know your happy and sad times. It teaches you to appreciate the people who are in the same time in their life as you. It teaches you how thankful you are that these are the people you get to grow up with. Friendsgiving is the meal you share with your friends who will all be in your life forever. Some of them may be in a long term relationship, a new one, a marriage, engagement, or single, but no one cares. No one asks you why you're doing something. Friendsgiving comes with all the perks of good food and good company and no awkward pressure to prove you're doing something with your life. Friendsgiving is a time to realize how thankful you are for the friends who help to shape you into who you are.