Sometimes, going home for Thanksgiving isn’t feasible – be it for personal or financial reason, or just bad luck – and it can feel discouraging to find yourself in that position. Luckily, we’ve put together a few options so that you’re not left stranded without a plan this holiday weekend!
1) Go home with a friend: If you have friends who live in the nearby area, see if any of them have an extra seat at their family’s Thanksgiving table! It can be a great way to get to know your friend’s family better, and you might also get to experience Thanksgiving traditions you haven’t before.
2) Makeshift Thanksgiving potluck dinner: You can make a game of this if you want. Gather up a bunch of friends or acquaintances and take a mass trip to the grocery store. Set a time limit of one or two hours and see if you can assemble the basic necessities for a Thanksgiving dinner (potatoes, green beans, turkey, pies). Whoever manages to get all the items first wins! Then, split the final cost of all the food and take it back to someone’s dorm to enjoy the spoils of your trip.
3) Volunteer at a soup kitchen or nursing home: This can be a great way to give back to the community for the holiday season. Check with local homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and nursing homes to see if they have any volunteer programs in place where you can help serve or prepare food, or share-a-meal programs where you sit down for dinner with one of the residents. It can really brighten up someone’s Thanksgiving!
4) Spend Thanksgiving dinner with a professor: A lot of professors volunteer each year to have students who can’t go home for the long weekend over to their houses for Thanksgiving dinner. If your professor has already offered, this can be a fun option to get to know a little more about them outside of the classroom. And who knows – visits like these might prove helpful around the time you need to start asking for letters of recommendation!
5) Run a turkey trot: There are a bunch of options in and around the Boston area for turkey trots, or small footraces held on Thanksgiving weekend. What better way can you think of burning off all of that pie and mashed potatoes?
6) Check out historical sites in/near Boston: Boston is filled with historical locations, and there’s no better time than Thanksgiving to tour them! In fact, only a short trip away is Plymouth, MA, the site of the first ever Thanksgiving. You can take advantage of this unique option and tour the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, and other such iconic locales.
In any case, whatever this Thanksgiving holds for you, we at HC Brandeis hope that your holiday is filled with fun memories and good food!