As college students, it's easy to get wrapped up in the life that surrounds you and forget about the journey we originally came from. We obsess over test scores and upcoming sporting events, and we fail to remember to call our parents and say hi to friends back home. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. We should be living in the moment and experiencing everything college has to offer, but it's never a bad idea to go back to your roots, and remember how you got to where you are.
Many of us went back home this past week for the Thanksgiving holiday and got to visit the people, our family and friends, who made us who we are today. Some rejoiced in the gathering of family you haven't seen in far too long. Others avoided the repeated questions you get every year from distant relatives like, "So what's your major again?" or "Are you dating anyone yet?" And almost all of us suffered the infamous food coma, trying to eat all of the free food we could before returning to the wonderful world of meal plans.
We each had a different experience this week, but one thing remains the same: this break gave us the opportunity to return to the place that made us who we are. We forgot about upcoming final exams, the stress of finding the perfect outfit to wear out and the fatigue of sleepless nights spent studying. We get to remember what it's like to take a shower without shoes on or being able to eat without standing in a line and swiping a card before. We remember why we felt so homesick, but also why we branched out on our own in the first place.
Most of all, we became grateful. Grateful for the life your parents gave you to be able to attend college. Grateful for the home cooked meal we get to enjoy after months of ordering out. Grateful for the company you get to share and the familiarity of everyone around you. We don't realize how good we had it until we are out into this world of community bathrooms and shoebox-sized dorms.
Thanksgiving is a holiday to celebrate the things and people in our life that we appreciative. Hopefully, for many of us, we saw that life before college was much more glamorous than we gave it credit for. This isn't to say college isn't the best time of your life, but Thanksgiving helps us truly grasp all of things we have been given and people we have met. So I hope you told your parents thank you for the life they gave you, because these are the people that gave us our roots.
