As I awkwardly reclined in my dentist’s chair this afternoon, she asked me when I was heading back to college. After I told her I was leaving the upcoming Sunday, she said, “Well, you’re probably bored at home by now, right?” From our conversation, I know that her son is in college, too, so she realizes the boredom that is often experienced by students living at home for a month in the middle of the year, especially if you're from the suburbs and all your friends are on vacation. But despite this lengthened state blissful laziness after New Year’s, going back to school is always weird.
Things usually start off strange when you think you’ll be able to pack your suitcase in an hour, but it ends up taking a lot longer than you expected. You may catch yourself thinking, Oh, I forgot I bought that, or, Do I take it? Do I leave it? You never know what you’ll need in Hell. By the time you’re finished, you have a suitcase full of clothes, a backpack full of books and electronics, a bag for your makeup and hair supplies, a laundry basket full of clean sheets, and a plastic bag with those boots you saw last minute in the mudroom on your way to the car.
Then you go to the grocery store and remember how dedicated you’ve been to fulfilling your New Year’s resolution. But then you also remember that your mother/father has been doing all the cooking for you lately, and a little piece of your heart snaps and dies. Suddenly, you have to come up with a list of food in your head (because God knows you didn’t make one) and make sure it fits into all these categories simultaneously: delicious, healthy, chocolaty, sugar-free, CARBS, gluten-free, savory, and everything green under 100 calories. Piece of cake.
Finally, you arrive at your dorm or apartment with a million bags and two parents telling you to hurry up because there is a line of cars waiting behind you on a one-way street while you scramble to get everything out of the car and throw it onto the sidewalk outside your building. Then, you struggle to get the key card that has been sitting safely in your backpack for a month. Finally, you open the front door and that smell hits you like a disturbing, distant memory.
The weirdest part, of course, is when you get back to your room to find your bed stripped of sheets, an unplugged refrigerator, empty drawers, and all the other untouched objects that have been sitting alone for far too long. And then there’s your roommate (Sophia, if you’re reading this, I don’t mean you!) You forgot you lived with another human and the world suddenly comes crashing down into your sad, empty hands. Now, it’s time to break out the noise-canceling headphones, extra loud fan, air freshener, vacuum cleaner, and Advil, because you know she/he didn’t make a New Year’s resolution to stop being a drunken mess.
Thankfully, as the day wears on, you start to see the faces of people who made your first semester so exciting, and you talk about new classes and drama that went down online over break (not your own, of course) and you exchange schedules to find out what days you’ll be able to eat lunch and go to the gym together. It doesn’t take long before everything falls back into place and winter break seems long gone.
