You have just spent five wondrous days away from school filling your body with food and spending time with friends and family. Yes, your immediate family is already on your nerves, and your extended family bantered you with awkward and unending personal questions. Despite having to survive the polarized political fights over the dining room table, it felt so good to be home. After such a reprieve, you may find yourself wanting to do an infinite number of other things, some perhaps questionable, instead of coming back to school. If all you think about is Christmas Break, if the looming thought of the three papers you must write and the five tests you should study for is leaving you with a crippling attitude, you are not alone. But here is why you need to brew yourself a large cup of extra strong coffee, haul yourself to the library, and get some stuff done.
This is the prime time of the semester. Make it or break it time, people. Low motivations aside, if you are blindsided by those visions of sugar plums that are dancing through your head, you are going to fail your final, then do badly in the class, which will be reflected on your transcript, whcih is what grad school admissions committees, employers, and future spouses will laugh at as they toss it into the trash, which you will then likely have to dig back out later. So, go study. Please.
With the holidays comes parties. Drinking peppermint-flavored hot chocolate, kissing under the mistletoe, posing in your tacky Christmas sweater, obnoxiously belting out Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You; all are better-enjoyed without the looming threat of unfinished assignments. You are about to be without your super fun college friends for a month. You need to soak up all the holiday cheer with them while you're all still in the same city. You will enjoy yourself more at the festivities knowing that your 18-page final paper is beautifully written, printed, and is sitting on your desk waiting to be turned in Monday morning.
Live out the heartfelt Instagram picture you surely posted on November 24. You have so much to be thankful for. You are a student with at an accredited university that has gathered the world for you and put it right at your fingertips. You have food, even if it is ramen, a roof over your head, regardless if you're sheltered by the four prison gray walls of your dorm room or a sketchy, leaky apartment, and access to knowledge, even if you don’t need it for your major. While it is normal to find yourself down in the dumps in the days following Thanksgiving Break, remember that there are people in this world who would do anything to be in your shoes; don’t disrespect them by not taking advantage of what you have.
Have some fun in these last few weeks of the semester. Write, study, and sleep (just not too much). Christmas is coming.
