Stage 1: Seasonal Uncertainty

It’s officially cold. The wind feels like tiny needles scraping your cheeks. You begin to gradually disappear under layers of oversized sweaters, flannels, and fuzzy socks. You can no longer get away with leaving your room in a deceptively thick sweatshirt, and you’re forced to pull out the big guns: your winter parka. However, when you look out the window in the morning, the sun is shining, the grass is green, and there isn’t a cloud in sight. If it’s still fall, why do you feel like your fingers are going to fall off after spending two minutes outside the comfort of indoor heating? You’re ready for Mother Nature to stop playing games and commit to being winter already.

Stage 2: First Snow Euphoria

It’s finally snowing, and the world is beautiful again! The sidewalk is covered in a murky, beige sludge, but at least it snowed. You have slipped and almost fallen to a humiliating death, multiple times, while navigating the thin layer of ice on every street corner, but at least it snowed. The salt on the sidewalks has already damaged your new winter boots, but at least it snowed. A monotonously grey world is now sparkling white, and every building, mailbox, and fire hydrant looks like it could be the star of a Hallmark greeting card. All is right with the world.

Stage 3: Winter Wonderland

You can now shamelessly succumb to the seasonal insanity that has been tempting you since Thanksgiving. All you want to do is listen to Mariah Carey’s Christmas album and drink hot cocoa from mugs with red noses on them. You happily disguise your newly acquired holiday chub with oversize, woolen clothing. Your Instagram feed is filled with cheesy photos of ugly sweater parties and babies in “Santa’s little helper” onesies, but you can’t even complain because you’re just as infatuated with this time of the year as everybody else. For now, the snow is charming and endearing, and the bitter cold is simply an excuse to pull out that festive scarf you only have an excuse to wear once a year.

Stage 4: Post-New Year Depression

The holidays are over and the end of winter break is slowly approaching. Without the extra boost of seasonal cheer, the snow is simply snow, and the cold is simply cold. There’s a little too much winter in your wonderland, right now. Your winter jacket looks like a straightjacket, and your skin is so repulsively dry that no amount of moisturizer can remedy the ashy pallor that has consumed your body. With the looming pressure of a new semester, the prospect of summer is like the distant light at the end of a freezing tunnel.

Stage 5: Hibernation

This is it. This is how it ends. Not with a bang, but with frostbite. The days blur together. You leave home in the dark, and you come home in the dark. You’ve forgotten what it feels like to be properly warm without the artificial assistance of climate control. You no longer check the extended forecast because you already know what it says: cold today, cold tomorrow, cold forever. You tear up a bit on the rare occasion that the wind chill is above 0, but the tears quickly freeze to your raw, red cheeks. Everyone has turned into the worst version of themselves. You’re sure that summer is just a figment of your imagination your subconscious created to comfort you in your polar-vortex induced depression. You dream of the Caribbean. You’ve never been to the Caribbean. You still dream of it.

Stage 6: As Spring As It Gets

You can’t remember when it started, but the heaps of snow have slowly melted into sporadic mounds, and patches of green grass have begun to peek through the gray landscape. Then the news began to circulate. The cashier told you, your parents told you, your professor told you, a random woman in the elevator told you: it’s going to be 45 degrees tomorrow. After months of subzero temperatures, the prospect of 45 degrees seems like you suddenly woke up in the middle of July. It’s time to pull out those shorts. Winter is (kind of) officially over.