With the semester winding down and finals just around the corner (#struggles), a general dreariness is descending over Kenyon’s majestic campus. Sure, last Friday was probably the most socially packed night Kenyon has seen in years and WalMart has overdosed on Christmas decorations, but with those three 15-page-papers, 2 projects, 3 presentations and finals on the horizon, even a reasonably priced inflatable Santa Claus emerging from an outhouse struggles to cheer me up. But even with the most horrible time of the year approaching, there is that light at the end of the tunnel: Winter Break. But is Winter Break always the escape we hope for?
For me specifically, living in the middle of effing nowhere presents its own challenges, but even those from bustling metropolises may find that winter break is simply just too much of a break (is that sacrilege to say right before finals?). My past two winter breaks at home have come and gone with a fairly obvious trend:
The first week home is spent mostly attempting to make up for all the sleep I didn’t get from Thanksgiving til the end of the semester. And watching all the episodes of Jerseylicious I fell behind on. The home-cooked meals and functional showers with real water pressure and temperature controls (!) are reviving.
Week 2 is completely consumed by the holidays and generally goes by quickly what with extended family popping in and out of my life in a hazy, “So what are you going to do with your education?,” “You know when I was your age I had a full time job to put myself through school!,” “So when are we gonna be seeing a ring dressing up that left hand?!” blur.
But after the ornaments go back up to the attic (or as my family likes to refer to it, The Room of Requirement) and the tree sadly gets taken to the dump, something changes about the nature of break. My mom constantly offering to cook for me and do my laundry inevitably turns into conversations about the future, where I’ll be working this summer, and how I’m planning to pay for this and that. The same can happen with your high school friends who you can’t WAIT to visit when you’re still at Kenyon, but then after a couple weeks of hearing about how there’s no possible way anyone could be having more fun at college than they are, or how you couldn’t possibly have had more work or worse finals than they did, suddenly your phone broke and you didn’t get their texts (oops!). Now those 4 weeks you were literally drooling for in you cubicle on 3rd floor Olin seem like they may never end.
Maybe I’m just being cynical. But for those of you who hear what I’m preachin’ at ya, here are a few tips that may help get you through those last 2 weeks and back to Gambier (or in my case off to Cape Town hayyyy) without ripping out your weave.
– Get outside! Even if you live in New England and it’s effing miserable (I hear ya), go for a walk. Some fresh air can be the perfect cure for cabin fever or suffocating families.
– Craft and sh*t. Start one of the four thousand projects you promised yourself you were going to do like three years ago. (See: “OMG I have to make a scrapbook of my high school years/college years/vacation to Italy,” etc.) It’s a nice break from looking at your computer screen or the TV (at least for me, it’s a nice break from my mom complaining about me only being on my computer or watching TV).
– Read for pleasure! Does that make me a dork? Whatevs, I don’t curr. Find a book that’s fun to read – they do exist and it’s another nice break from the aforementioned technology. If you’re like Caroline and are the last person on the planet who hasn’t read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, read it before the movie comes out!
– Cook! This is one of those things I always promise myself I’m gonna do, so maybe now I’ll do it. Give momz and popz a break and make dinner one night. They’ll def appreciate it and it’ll give you some brownie points for when you inevitably screw something else up later.
– Learn the moves to your fave music video. “Love On Top,” here I come (#dreamzcancometru).
– Talk to your parents about their lives! Maybe? No? Okay, worth a shot.
– Drink, heavily. (Jus playin’…or am I?)
Until then: Merry Finals to all, and to all, a Gund night!