Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and extended family. Every year, college students all across the country head back home for the time of thanks and catching up. The last Thursday of November serves as the day to honor our pilgrim ancestors and for that one aunt who always has something to say about how much you've "grown" since the last time she saw you.

The infamous family dinner usually starts with a doorbell. It rings and you know your judgment day has arrived. Usually, your grandparents are the first to walk in and ask for the boyfriend everyone knows you don't have, but they ask with that little sense of hope that maybe one day a prince charming will appear in the background and a nice shiny diamond will sit on your left hand.

Next, the aunts and uncles come barging in because who uses doorbells anymore? They welcome you with open arms and hugs and kisses and all things to smother you with the love they have for you.

You can smell all the different perfumes and it makes you slightly light headed but deep down you know you missed that smell.

Adults will take one table and kids another, for once you're not sitting in the playroom with sparkling grape juice in little wine cups but you're actually there, you've made the big leagues: the adult table. You join hands to give thanks for everything that has been given this year, and of course for the delicious food that lies right in front of you. The turkey is cut, the wishbone is given out, along with different sides of mashed potatoes, corn, bread rolls, a weird casserole of some type that tastes surprisingly good, and sweet potatoes.

You think once everyone starts eating you've escaped the interrogation, but you were wrong. Like good cop/bad cop your family seems to throw questions at you faster than an MLB pitcher could.

How was the drive?When are you going back? Did you make any new friends? What did you do on the weekends over there?

Anyparties, tattoos, piercings? How's the boyfriend you don't have? And of course, that one health freak family member will blurt out "Looks like you haven't missed a meal," and that’s the end of the dinner for you.

Just like lions will leave a carcass after feeding, you are forgotten about for the rest of the evening and you secretly wish you could be back in the playroom sipping on the sparking grape juice instead.

The family members begin to leave one by one, depending on who wants to go black Friday shopping or not, then those who have work in the morning, and then those who are just plain bored and want to leave before obligatory clean up starts.

You sit in the kitchen eating what's left of the pecan or pumpkin pie, and your parents comes in thanking you for being such a sport then hand you the broom and you successfully survived your first Thanksgiving back from college.