Or uphill, really, depending on how you look at it.

We all know by now that th finals week period between Thanksgiving and Christmas Breaks is a college student's stress-filled purgatory.

By the same token, however, the period between Christmas and the return to school is the same seemingly infinite period, except it's filled with pure, seething, aching, burning, undeniable boredom.

Think of your Christmas break like a shorter version of the story line diagram your 6th grade English teacher showed you time and time again, and it might be a little easier to grasp.

The first few days home from Christmas break (which, for me, include my birthday) are a very confusing but exciting time.

They represent the rising action.

During this blissful period of time, you get to sleep late, eat all the food you want, watch all the Christmas movies you could ever possibly handle, and tackle your friends from high school with bear hugs as you all return valiantly from your first semesters at completely different schools.

After the rising action, there has to be a climax, right? In a case such as this, the climax can be summed up in one word and one word only: Christmas.

It's the reason for the season, the reason we have a (*cough, cough*) Christmas break to begin with and the reason we quiz ourselves over and over in preparation for the 20 million questions about college from each and every inquisitive aunt or grandmother on the planet so that we don't get tongue-tied or appear as if we don't "have it all together."

Do we really have it together though? Really?

I'll let you figure that out for yourself, but that's another article for another day.

Christmas ends up being such a hectic time that when all the food has been eaten and all the relatives have left, the only thing we really can do is lie down and admit defeat.

We tell ourselves that we can now relax, but can we really?

Now that we've cleared what seemed to be the final hurdle, the home stretch seems a lot more daunting than previously realized.

At this point, we've got about 10 days until it's back to school to hit the books and fulfill that New Year's resolution of not watching as much Netflix as we did last semester.

If your break has been great, the trajectory of your final few days spent at home can be observed from two completely different directions.

On the one hand, you're sliding downward toward an inevitable return to a stressful environment that might just eat you alive and spit you out, but you're also fighting an uphill battle by trying to be productive with your last few days of time off before you're thrown back into the world of papers, professors, and pizza when you really don't need it.

If your break has been a little worse than you expected, know that your return to school will help you get back into a normal routine and that you'll soon be reunited with some of the best friends you've ever had.

Whatever the case, enjoy these last few days. Cherish your time with your family, tug on your warmest clothes, then walk back onto your college campus with the "Eye of the Tiger," ready to take on the collegiate world for a few more months.