Finals are over, which means that the bulk of us students will be home for the holidays and the wonderful thing most of us tend to call “winter break”. Despite the month or so off from school, there are definitely upsides and downsides to having to be stuck back at home living with your parents for a while- no matter how much you love them and no matter how much they’re excited for you to be home. Trust me, that ends pretty damn quick. This isn’t the short, tiny breaks we get for Columbus Day or Thanksgiving that we had this semester, but a whole freaking month without the freedom college gives us.
Stage 1: Excitement
You’re super excited for finals to be over, after the past couple of weeks being a personal hell for you. You’re happy to be home in your bed, surrounded by family who love you, without having to put flip flops on to take a shower, and hopefully getting bombarded with some fantastic, homemade food. Yes, no more dining hall food for a while! Plus, Christmas and the holidays are right around the corner, which for the most part makes the majority of people extremely happy.
Stage 2: Overwhelmed
It’s cute for the first few days, but after that, your parents smothering you with love, attention, and wanting to spend every waking minute with you can get a little old, and overwhelming. Like hey, give me a few hours to just lay in my bed, relax, and binge watch a great show on Netflix without you coming into my room to ask me a question. I know that parents miss you when you’re away from school, but it gets super overwhelming to be around them so much.
Stage 3: Pure and utter boredom
Even if you have friends back home, a job to go to, and things to do, for the most of us, boredom sets in approximately a week after Christmas, right before the New Year begins. Once it sets in that there are still like 3-4 more weeks of you being at home before you’re back at school, it makes you want to curl up into a ball and cry for a while. Not a fun situation, but it’s reality.
Stage 4: Avoiding people you see in public
While you’re home, you’re bound to make your way out of the house to the local mall, pizza shop, or even the supermarket to do something. You can’t spend all of your time on the couch watching Netflix, no matter how much you might want to. It takes special skills to avoid those people from high school you really hoped you’d never have to see again, but unfortunately, being back in your hometown makes that almost inevitable. Just be prepared with basic statements such as “Oh, yeah, school’s good” or “I’m totally graduating on time…” just in case the situation arises.
Stage 5: Lack of freedom and begging for it back
One of the best things about being away from college is that you finally have the freedom to basically do whatever you want, whenever you want, as long as your schoolwork is on time and your grades are good (for most of us at least). But when you’re home the freedom goes out the window, and you’re suddenly right back to asking your parents for permission to go out, them not letting you go to a party that you heard about, or them finding your fake ID and cutting it up so you’re out $100+ and now have to get your hands on a new one. The list goes on and on, but the freedom is gone while you’re home. You might as well be five again.
Stage 6: Acceptance
Around the last week of winter break, you start to accept the fact that it’s not the best thing in the world, and that you’re just going to have to get through it. The last week is also usually full of you saying your goodbyes before you’re back off to your campus or squeezing in last minute visits with people you promised you’d see before the break was over even though you wasted the first three weeks.
