Thanksgiving. The most wonderful time of the year. The time where college kids are ready to go home to the best home-cooked meal of their lives. The annual reset for the body that has endured intense consumption of questionable cafeteria food and an unhealthy amount of late-night fast food. The body that trudges to class everyday, even on the roughest of mornings. Thanksgiving time with friends and family and amazing, incredible, much-needed food is the thing that keeps us going all semester. So what does the food that you're most craving for Thanksgiving say about how your semester is going so far?

Stuffing

I'm starting with my all-time favorite part of every Thanksgiving feast. I look forward to stuffing because my mom always makes it and lets me help her make it. I love everything about stuffing- breaking up the loaves of white and wheat bread to make it, listening to Christmas carols while cooking it, and getting your hands messy!

If you're looking forward to stuffing the most, your semester has been kind of rough. You've been sleep-deprived and now crave the warm gastronomical blanket of toasty bread in your stomach. But you also know that all of your hard work has paid off and you deserve this treat this Thanksgiving! You've also probably been a little homesick. Nothing says home to me more than mama's stuffing.

Turkey

If you're really, truly craving turkey more than anything this Thanksgiving, you've been eating trash all semester and now your food standard is so low that all you want is some real meat that you don't have to question or eat fried. Just real, healthy-tasting meat. You're past the point of homesick and onto the point of just trying to survive. Your organs are craving sustenance that isn't imitation meat or fried chicken. You're realizing that everything is better in moderation and now you desperately need a dietary re-start to get healthy and a semester re-start to get your work done. That start begins with a T and rhymes with Workey.

Mashed Potatoes

If you're craving mashed potatoes this Thanksgiving, you have recently undergone a transformation. Like the potato that has been mushed and seasoned, you have been changed as well. Unlike the Turkey-Cravers who are just beginning their positive transformation, you've already finished and you've come out better than ever! You are having a great semester so far. Like a mashed potato, you're content with life and chillin' this semester. Everyone really enjoys you! You sit there, relax, and people gravitate toward you. You're having fun and also doing really well. Everyone likes you and you like everyone, too.

Sweet Potatoes

The Sweet Potato-Craver has had a bitter semester. Maybe it has been bitter cold where your school is or maybe you have bitter feelings about how the semester has gone and you're looking to sweeten up your life! Don't worry, it's about to get a whole lot sweeter. You probably have a lot on your plate already, but you've been saving a special spot for something extra-sweet and colorful. You want a change, but unlike the turkey-craver, you don't necessarily need a change. Baked sweet potatoes are just as good as mashed sweet potatoes, just like your semester is just as good now as it will be after. You're doing great, but if you are going to change anything, don't let it be your lifestyle, make it your outlook. Maybe you should think outside the box next time something bitter happens and throw some toasted marshmallows on top to make it extra sweet.

Green Bean Casserole

If you're craving green bean casserole this Thanksgiving, you've been struggling to find a good balance in your semester. The green bean in the casserole represents your feelings that you have to be dedicated to your academics because it is the healthiest thing for your academic career. The cream of mushroom soup represents your sleep deprivation and you want to be warm and slow and lazy. Finally, the fried onions on top represent your perception of the semester thus far: a little smelly and very crusty.

Honey-Glazed Carrots

Honey Glazed Carrot Craver, you've been having an identity crisis this semester. You don't know what you're job is: be good and healthy or be fun and sweet? Why not both You got tired of your boring, slender self and decided you needed to make a change. Maybe you got a drastically different haircut or changed your wardrobe. Whatever the change was, you felt that you needed to change the way you present yourself to people. Instead of being a healthy carrot, you wanted to be seen as a sweet treat.

Creamy Spinach

Although stuffing is my favorite, I'm craving creamy spinach the most. The stuffing is the thing I can always count on being there for me, but my Aunt Cathy's creamy spinach is the thing that I crave because it only comes to the party on special occasions. If you're craving creamy spinach you've really been making an effort this semester to turn things that you would have normally perceived as bitter into something better, and it's totally working. You used to take a big bag of green, leafy situations and let them cook in your mind until they are boiled down to bitter, soggy green, but now you take those same situations and look at them in the bigger picture. You take the situations and while you let them cook in your mind, you add in some other ingredients from the bigger picture- what the other person is thinking and doing, what you have been through to make you think a certain way and what the other person has been through to make them act a certain way. The outcome isn't a small, bitter perspective, but it's a beautifully balanced side dish of flavor that measures the pros and cons equally.

Creamy Corn

If you're craving creamy corn, your semester has been full of these delicious golden kernels of experiences and now you are just looking forward to spending time with family and then getting back to school to make things even sweeter. You are taking all of the things you've learned and done up until this point and now you are looking forward to going back to campus with a full belly and a positive outlook on life. You are really excited to keep improving this semester.

Cranberry Sauce

If you are craving cranberry sauce this holiday, you've had a bumpy semester and you're looking to smooth it all out and just enjoy some fruity flavors. The tart flavor of cranberry sauce is a bitter reminder that you have to go back to school in a few days, but the juicy taste reminds you that good things can come out of the round bumps in the road.

Mac and Cheese

Some of my friends have mac and cheese at their Thanksgivings. I don't, but I think it's a Southern thing. If you're looking forward to mac and cheese the most this year, you have been #thriving so far this semester. Unlike most of us, you haven't been eating easy mac every single night of the semester for dinner so you're not sick of seeing the orange-cheesy glow on luminescent elbow noodles.

Ham

I know turkey is ~supposedly~ the main attraction, my family usually also has ham. If you're craving ham, your semester has been hearty and filling. You've had some juicy things happen to you this semester, some sweet and some salty. You have secretly loved being in the center of all of the drama, having all of the attention on you, but you let someone else be the Thanksgiving turkey for the end of the semester, and you are mostly content being on the side. You know that you are inherently better than the bland, dry people that try to steal your spotlight, but you let them have it just for this one occasion. You'll be the main attraction once more by Christmas.

Dessert

If you're craving dessert first this Thanksgiving, I am so proud of you. You are winning at life! You feel healthy enough to dig right into that pecan pie and you are constantly enjoying the sweetest things that life has to offer, not worrying about social norms or how you'll be perceived. You are content with yourself and you don't care what other people think. You have been able to shift your focus to positive things rather than harboring on the negative. Bad grade on a test? No biggie. You'll get them next time. Show up at a lame party? Not a problem! The music isn't too bad. You don't worry about the bland turkey or the side dishes because you know that life's too short not to eat dessert first.