Thanksgiving vacation is nearly upon us, hovering in the air like the knell of doom.
What? You don’t think so? You actually have … good feelings for this holiday?
While the world-and saying that I mean only America and American people-is preparing to celebrate the famed Turkey Day, I don’t plan on having much of a vacation. Oh, I may not have to go to class every day, and I may get to go to my parents’ house and eat dressing (not stuffing), but one thing always spoils Thanksgiving Day for me.
No, I am not an advocate for turkey rights. I can ignore the historical inaccuracies within the Thanksgiving story. And I can even handle the mania for early Christmas shopping. But one worry always overshadows my vacation.
Every day, even during Thanksgiving dinner, I think, “I have a project due on Monday.”
I know, it’s silly. We shouldn’t be so paranoid. If we just do a lot of preliminary work before vacation, and then work steadily all throughout vacation, we could conceivably get everything done.
Of course, the week before Thanksgiving break is always difficult. By this time in the year, everyone is really tired and needs a break. So we have to take time to watch television and browse the Internet just to preserve our sanity.
But that’s educational, too. I beat my score four times on Minesweeper. I found out from the office animal personality quiz that I tested mostly monkey, with a hint of rhino. And I also learned that Clark Kent on “Smallville” takes off his shirt every three or four episodes.
You know. Important things like that.
Plus, the end of the semester is nearing. We won’t be seeing all of our friends for almost an entire two-month span. And we need to do all those things we’ve been planning. We haven’t been to Mexico Tipico in a week. We haven’t had a movie night for almost two weeks. We need to spend time together.
This isn’t technically wasting time, though, even if we all have projects to do. We are spending quality time together and living the college experience. This is what we’re supposed to do.
And, so, we suddenly find ourselves staring at an empty computer screen on Monday night before Thanksgiving break. We really should be working, but it’s practically vacation time. It’s really not a good time to work. We also wouldn’t be able to work the next day, because we have to go home as early as possible.
So what do we do? We print out a few articles from the Internet and go to sleep.
Granted, we have a lot of time to work during Thanksgiving break, since we don’t have to go to class and we don’t have to work for a week. Even if we don’t lug our computer home, we can still get all our preliminary writing done.
But there’s so much to do over Thanksgiving break. Shopping, for instance. If we don’t get our Christmas shopping done during that week, everything will be gone or sold out. Remember the Christmas icicle lights? Remember Tickle-Me-Elmo? It was only through planning ahead that anyone got those items the year they were popular. And we have to get the fad Christmas item this year. It’s a moral imperative.
And then there are the Thanksgiving festivities. Thanksgiving dinner is a big deal. First we go to the grocery store and get every ingredient for the three to four meals we’ll be cooking and eating. When we get home, we realize we didn’t get the cranberry sauce. So we have to go back to get it, but all the stores are out of the regular cranberry sauce. All they have left is the nasty whole berry cranberry sauce. If we don’t eat anything that takes the shape of the container in which it came and looks like pickled beets when sliced, the Thanksgiving meal just isn’t sanctified.
Then we realize we forgot to buy the pickled beets.
The weekend after Thanksgiving Day is problematic at best. We just don’t feel like doing anything. It’s mostly because we’re still eating turkey. As everyone knows, turkey will make us drowsy. Who can read all that research when we’re stoned from poultry?
So there we are. Back in our room or apartment Sunday night. Or maybe we’re camped out in the library. We know that we won’t be getting any sleep that night, but, remarkably, all hints of drowsiness or apathy are forgotten. And we’ll get the projects done with the only motivation we know: desperation.
Of course, we’ll always have plenty of time to study for exams … if we feel like it.
Angela Adair is a senior English major. She can be reached at [email protected].