The Struggle Of Thanksgiving Break In College

The food is great, but not with homework alongside it.

By: Samantha Pearl Weller - Odyssey

 

Thanksgiving break has always been the definition of amazing home-cooked meals, pilgrims and fall vegetables. It's always been that holiday where you say, "Oh, I can't wait to eat the big meal," while actually wishing it was December already. In college, when it comes time for Thanksgiving break, you get excited to finally sleep in, have no classes and eat edible food again -- or so you think.

School usually likes to follow us home on Thanksgiving break. Anything that has the word "break" in it, in my opinion, shouldn't have any form of work associated with it. However, it's not uncommon for a lot of college students to have homework over break. If you're lucky enough to not have any homework over break, you still have a lot of studying for the huge finals week following Thanksgiving break. Thanksgiving break is barely a break for some College students, given that most of us still have work to do. It is hard to keep up with work and not forget anything with all the distractions and food over break, but every college student feels the need to be doing at least something school-related over break. If you are lucky enough to not have homework during break, be extremely thankful this Thanksgiving that you can enjoy the thousands of amazing calories of food even more.

Speaking of food, Thanksgiving recipes have never been better for college students who are used to living on ramen noodles, microwave dinners, 7-Eleven food and soda. However, it is hard eating so much food a few weeks away from the end of the semester, where students are low on food plans, are too busy to have a regular eating schedule or are too busy to eat a lot at all. Going from eating a ton of high quality food for a week with a normal eating schedule, to a messed up one that contains a diminished food quality and selection, is not a good transition.

It's always hard to decide whether to eat a ton of food while we can over break and struggle with being used to that amount of food during finals week, or to not stuff our faces so going back to school won't be as hard.

Lastly, Thanksgiving is a fun time of year. The placement for college students, not so much. While winter break is a wonderful break, and we are finally done and have a brand new year and semester waiting for us the end, Thanksgiving is the opposite, and quite frankly an awkward pause in the semester. We are almost done, but haven't faced the worst of it yet: finals week. And it's waiting for us at the end of Thanksgiving break. If you're one of those few people that feels they are ready to tackle finals and just want to get the week over with before Thanksgiving break, then you're in store for an annoying wait and suspense over Thanksgiving.