Thanksgiving Break is the Worst Kind of Tease

We’ve made it twelve weeks into the semester, and now it’s time for what we’ve all been waiting for: Thanksgiving break. Gorging on home-cooked meals, sleeping in our own beds, and seeing hometown friends never seemed more necessary. Except we’re starting to think Thanksgiving isn’t really much of a “break;” in fact, it seems this week is just a tease of relief before entering the red zone of the fall semester.

Many will agree Thanksgiving break induces stress—and not the “How the hell am I going to possibly fit into my jeans after feasting?” stress. It’s what comes after that has us biting off our fingernails in front of our extended family members. Every Syracuse student knows the minute we return to campus on Monday we’ll get slammed with more work, more exams, and more papers than we prepared for. Some of us opt to take our work home, expecting they’ll use the extra time to study, catch up on late assignments, and write papers instead of nap, eat, and nap more. But, let’s face it, we don’t. The textbooks stay secured in our suitcases the for the whole week while our notes remained untouched, just thrown into our carry-ons for the hell of it. But of course, when we board the plane to return to Syracuse, it hits us: we never got any actual work done. Thus, the stress ensues.

It’s like pseudo-stress. Stress-ception, if you will. We spend the whole break stressing about how stressed we’re going to be when we return to class. What was once a time to rest and catch up with old friends and family has now become a time to freak the fuck out over every little bit of work we’re procrastinating.

Thanksgiving break gives us a taste of what the time off in December will be like. When college becomes a full-time job, we should know better than to take breaks for granted; yet here we are, not realizing how fast Thanksgiving is going to go by, and it leaves us wanting more. It nearly breaks our heart to realize we still have three more weeks of the semester left before we can bask in that month-long break. We have to struggle through finals and endless nights of cramming, all so we can pass our tests and get the hell out. As much as we love ‘Cuse, we’re already in desperate need of a longer break after pulling multiple all-nighters (and, depending on how many you take, half your Christmas break will probably be you passed out in bed, catching up on some z’s).

Having a week off of school in November is such a tease. We think we’re going to study, but we won’t. We think it’ll go by slow, but it won’t. We think the next few weeks will go by fast in anticipation of Christmas break, but – surprise! – they won’t. We’ll be stuck barely getting by in our classes and squeezing in some last-minute outings to DJ’s and the Dome before the semester ends. The next three weeks may feel eons long, but stay strong Jerks, you’ve got this. Probably. Maybe? Hopefully. Probably not.