As college students, we know that Christmas Break is truly a gift sent forth to rejuvenate our spirits. After the finals hangover that we all experience, we finally get the chance to relax for a bit. You get to see your family (even the ones you didn’t want to), you get to hang out with your friends back home, but most importantly of all, you don’t have any schoolwork at all to worry about and you get to sleep in probably more than usual. Come mid-January we return back to the good ole grounds that we know as TCU with a fresh attitude and an eagerness to get back into the swing of the old familiar routine. Catch up with your friends that you haven’t seen in a month though it feels much longer, survey the unknown faces in your new classes to find out who you want in a group project and who you don’t, go out on the weekends with an excitement only available at the beginning of each semester, and generally just get back to that college lifestyle that we all fell in love with.
The first few weeks are great. Your professors haven’t had the chance to make you not like them yet, there’s no homework, tests or papers to really worry about yet, and your recharged battery is ready to take a new and possibly unknown initiative to hit the ground running both academically and socially. Classes are fun and you have a great time on your carefree weekends. But after the glamour of the new semester wears off, the academic atmosphere that seemed to have gotten lost in our memory slowly starts to creeps back into reality as weeks turn into months.
Your first round of tests and assignments are quickly approaching, and then it hits you and you think Oh yeah, I remember this now. I go to college. You’ve come to the realization that not only will you have to do work again, but you are also smack dab in the middle between Christmas Break and Spring Break. With 4 weeks on either side of you, you become vulnerable to the February Lull.
Encountering the February Lull means being too distant from Christmas Break to remember all the joy it brought, but too far from Spring Break to really start looking forward to it yet. You have hit a roadblock and it feels like your mind and attitudes are stalled in autopilot. We think How in the world am I supposed to get to spring break from here? Whether it’s your first college spring break or your fourth, the daunting timeline is consistent.
School is much easier to cope with and enjoy if you have something to look forward to, preferably in the near future. With little external motivation, you are forced to self-motivate (not a bad trait to have) and find a way to get through the next couple weeks. Aha you’ve got it. You can start looking forward to the weekends more and enjoying yourself then but then again they can often get boring and repetitive. You could try and start a workout regiment and turn that 6 pack from the other night into a 6 pack of rock hard abs. At the end of the day, however, the days will go by at the same rate and your work will be there regardless. It doesn’t really matter how, it just matters that you do find a way through the February Lull.
After accepting the reality of the February Lull and working ceaselessly to get through it, you notice that spring break is closer than you realize and you can actually get excited about it, whether you are going somewhere exotic of just back home to your parents couch. You’re there. You did it. The February Lull has been conquered and you are on your way to a quick break from school. We all make it through the lull but sometimes we truly wonder how we did. Now you just have to worry about the stretch all the way to summer. Hey, remember Finals? Yeah, me too, and those aren't very fun either.
