Home for the Holidays

So it's officially winter break and that means you and all of your old friends (and people who think they're your friends) are back home!  Great.  That means listening to everyone's CrAzY college stories, telling that guy you're still not interested, eating your weight in Christmas cookies, and having that annual conversation with your relatives that yes you still want to be an actress, no you have not grown out of it, yes you are out of your mind, please pass the sparkling cider.  Oh, that's just me?  Well, you're missing out on prime familial disappointment, let me tell you.

Winter break is funny...all those people you swore you'd never see again after you left for college, you'll see them.  It's like when you were still in high school and told your parents they should treat you like an adult because "in a few years I'll be in the REAL WORLD!"  And then you got to college and realized it's the farthest thing from the real world you will ever experience.  Yeah, life is like that.  You come home for the holidays and realize that though you may have left, absolutely nothing else has changed.

Except that is, for all of the best friends you seem to have acquired.  You don't realize how many "friends" you had in high school until you come home for break.  Suddenly nearly every 18-20 year old is your old chum and wants to catch up at holiday themed parties chock full of peppermint bark and self promotion.  It's hard being the only one at a college no one knows about.  All of your friends want to make sure you know that they're having a great time majoring in business/advertising/chemistry, have rushed Theta Alpha Zeta Beta Phi and let's face it, there are only so many times I can hear about frat parties and fast food restaurants on campus before I want to stone people with the pebbles on Middle Path.  Kenyon is cool too guys!  We had a movie filmed on campus over the summer with that guy from How I Met Your Mother...no, not Neil Patrick Harris...

So I'm bracing myself to spend another winter break convincing people that just because it's in the middle of farmland, Kenyon is not a vocational school, and after they believe that it's actually a liberal arts school, that I do not spend my days singing songs, holding hands, and occupying everything.

But really it's the questions from my family that put the cherry on top of winter break.  Not only do I have to defend my major, lack of boyfriend, and the fact that I do actually have social skills, but my brother just got accepted to all three of the schools he applied to.  With large scholarships.  While he gets to celebrate and bathe in hundred dollar bills, I get reminded that I spent my winter break senior year frantically writing supplement essays after I got deferred from Vassar.  I was forced to finish one application a day for a week...and when I say forced I mean my mother all but chained me to the kitchen table as I slowly regressed to childhood, surrounded by coloring books and sucking my thumb.  I don't actually know all the schools I applied to, my mom just opened the laptop and told me to write.  After a day of that she gave up and wrote helped me write two generic application essays which were then Frankenstein-ed together to fit any application's supplement.

But really, I'm happy to be home with my queen sized bed and shower that I don't have to wear flip-flops in.  And I have the 007 Days of Christmas marathon to look forward to!  So really, in the grand scheme of things, what's not to love about break?

PS:  My mom and dad really do love me and support my crazy dreams.  I should give them credit for living with a perpetual five year old, they really are great.