By the time Thanksgiving comes around 99 percent of college students are ready to go home for a much needed break. As great as college is, it can also be extremely exhausting. Going home means one entire week of no exams, real food, and the ability to not see anyone unless you actually want to. All in all, Thanksgiving break is the best thing that could happen to a college student (until winter break, that is). Yet, even though Thanksgiving break comes with all of these benefits and more, our expectations for the week don't always live up to what reality has to offer. Here are four ways in which the ideal Thanksgiving break differs from reality:
1. Seeing friends you haven't talked to or seen in months.
College students don't tend to have a lot of extra time on their hands. They're constantly running around trying to balance classes, a job, extracurriculars, and all the other things that they're expected to be involved with. On the rare occasion that we have a free minute or two, we'd much rather spend it catching up on sleep than texting a friend from back home. And that's fine, because they're probably in the same boat. Every now and then we do send a quick text just to make sure that they're still alive, and this short conversation usually ends in the classic, "We definitely have to hang out over break!" So we come back from break expecting to have our week filled with all of these plans, until we realize that it's so much easier to stay at home watching Netflix and sitting around in our pajamas. So you never text those friends and you hope that they're lazy enough to do the same. Plus, you guys can totally catch up over winter break anyway.
2. Getting all of your work done on time.
Just because we're on Thanksgiving break doesn't mean we can completely forget about our responsibilities. Once break is over there's only a few short weeks until finals begin, and some professors love to squeeze in one more exam before then. Thanksgiving break is really more for catching up on all the work you've fallen behind on than it is for relaxing. We tell ourselves that we'll be really productive and study hard the first few days so that maybe we can actually enjoy some of our break. Yet, year after year we find ourselves staring at an untouched pile of work on Sunday night, wondering how break went by so quickly. On the bright side, the time wasn't completely wasted. Think of all the sleep we were able to catch up on. It'll probably offset the all-nighters that we're guaranteed to pull in the upcoming weeks.
3. Enduring the classic family dinner conversations.
You'd think that after a while your family would start to pick up on what they're not supposed to ask college students. We don't want to tell you one more time about how single we are or how we still haven't decided on a major. Just for this one week, can't we all agree to not talk about those things? We get that you're all just trying to stay involved in our lives and that you honestly care about us, but trust us, asking these questions is not the way to show your love.
4. Debating whether we'd rather eat or still be able to fit into our jeans.
The real reason most of us look forward to Thanksgiving break is the food. Dining hall food was tolerable for a while, but now we're just really craving a nice home-cooked meal. All of this food probably isn't the best thing for our waistlines, so we start off break claiming that we'll go to the gym everyday to balance all of the calories we're about to consume. Most of us make it there for the first day (props to you if you go back for a second) and hope that'll last us for the rest of the week. It's just so hard to get yourself to the gym when it's less than a one minute walk to the pantry, you know? Honestly, the entire first half of the week is just a giant pregame for Thanksgiving dinner. We'll work it off eventually.
Although Thanksgiving break might not everything we hoped it would be, it was still a nice change from the routine of college life. And while we might not have done it completely right this time, good thing there's next year when we can try again.
