Everything you definitely did over spring break at home

We all love going to Temple. We love living in the city, partying in the neighborhood and being a part of the social buzz around campus. So when it comes to spring break, many students miss their beloved school, especially if spring break takes place in the winter, when no other school has off.

Thanks to the unfortunate timing of our spring break, Temple students (who don’t plan awesome vacations) sometimes have to get creative when they’re left at home with nothing to do but count down the days until they return to school. Here are some things every Temple student did or encountered over their break at home.

Get organized

On any other break, as soon as you walk into your room, you would drop your bags off and ditch unpacking for your friends. Since said friends are at school doing bigger and better things, you decide to unpack. Feeling a high from your productivity, you decide to tidy up a little bit more. You dust off some books on your shelf and surface areas which hadn’t been looked at since Christmas, and you rearrange your closet, which has always been little bit of a mess. Before you know it, you are completely sanitizing and organizing everything in your room. You start to micromanage everything and develop an elaborate organization super system which is sure to succeed. You start to use organizational tools, like Excel, and start plotting every day of the next half of the semester.

Help mom around the house

After declaring that your life is completely together, you decide to take your positive momentum downstairs and share it with everybody you touch. You see your mother in the kitchen and offer to help with dinner. She is delighted at your offer and asks you to do sort of menial task anybody could do. You feel like you’re just taking up space and getting in the way as she attempts to prepare the family meal. Normally whenever you helped with dinner it was because she needed you, but now she seems to have everything under control. She has a super system of her own.

So, you just stand out of the way and tell her all the PG-13 college stories you have while she talks about work and family gossip you’re not involved in. When dinner is finally served, it is amazing – perhaps the best meal your mother has ever made. You feel like all you did in the two decades under her roof was hold her back from her culinary talents, and you envy your younger siblings for their opportunity to enjoy the food from your new and improved mother.

Hang out with your younger siblings

The first thing you notice when you see your little brother is how tall he’s gotten. He’s so tall it scares you. The thought of him growing even more is dangerous. At this rate there is no doubt he will be taller than you when he’s done growing, and he’ll probably be taller than six feet.

You try to talk to him but he’s not interested. You try to put him on to some new music because he’s finally old enough to start listening to songs with swearing, but he rejects it in favor of some EDM song, the one genre you promised you wouldn’t let him listen to. You try to engage him with a video game, but he tells you he’s already really deep into an online match and can’t quit now.

While your little brother is sucked into his game, you hop over to your sister to catch up. You knock on her door but she doesn’t respond, so you crack open the door and she screams at you for entering. Now that you’re in her room, you try to say hi. She tells you to go away. As you walk down the hall back to your room, you hear her apologizing to her friends over Skype and mentioning how much of a loser you are for not going to Cancun for break.

Family activities

Despite your family showing neglect for you, you try your best to formulate a fun activity you can all bond over. You suggest playing Monopoly, but then realize that would probably start a fight which would tear the family in two. You suggest a movie, but nobody can agree on a title. There doesn’t seem to be a single movie in the world that truly is fun for the whole family.

After negotiating with every member of the family, calling in favors and pulling a few strings, you finally agree on a movie. By the time you start it, it’s already 9:30pm and everybody has work or school the next day, so your dad opts out less than an hour in and your mom follows soon after. Your siblings haven’t even looked up from their phones. At this point, you’re not even enjoying the movie so you flip it on to a TV show, but as soon as your sister looks at what you put on, she leaves in disgust. Your brother storms out too because you changed it before his favorite part.

Rest

With nothing else to do all day, you go back to your room to rest. You think about all of the fun other people are having and sit there sadly, thinking about how your family has moved on without you. With nothing to look forward to tomorrow, you sleep away a solid 14 hours and don’t get out of your bed until your hunger pain grows to an immense level.

Make your own food

With nobody home and an empty stomach, you’re forced to make your own food. You go into the kitchen and are underwhelmed by the sight of a near empty refrigerator and a pantry with nothing but some old granola bars and soup. You try to make the best of it by putting together a multi-course meal of cold cut sandwiches, crackers and soup. You feel like a master chef and are satisfied with your meal, which you say was probably a little bit better than the food at J&H. Unlike the dining hall, you do have to clean it all up. As you wash your dishes, you regret the time and effort you put into this meal, but realize it was probably the highlight of your day.

Use the internet

In between resting, eating and avoiding your family, which no longer has room for you, all you do is go on social media. You find yourself constantly refreshing your Instagram, only to see pictures of your classmates tanning on a tropical beach or zip lining through a jungle. The only thing on Twitter are tweets about how awesome your friends’ lives are and retweets of cat GIFs. You spend an unhealthy amount of time on Facebook stalking your friends, exes, people you don’t know and even yourself. You try Reddit and see some cool things, but you just can’t seem to get the hang of it just yet.

Eventually everything starts to get old so you go back to the one place you said you would never go: Tinder. The next thing you know you’re out of right swipes for the next 24 hours because yes, you are that bored.

Walk your dog

Every morning you wake up to hear your annoying dog barking. You feed him and take him outside to pee, but it’s not enough. You have to walk him. It takes a solid 20 minutes to put his leash on because he won’t stop moving. As soon as you open the door, he lunges and sends you flying down your porch. Desperately grabbing on for control, the dog leads you all through the neighborhood. He barks at everything and everyone, and you look like a fool for not knowing how to manage him. By the time the walk is over, you’re out of breath, scraped up and your ears are ringing from all of the barking.

Visit your old high school

It’s a week day, so you decide to take a trip to your old stomping grounds – the town high school. Walking through the main entrance, you get chills remembering all of the good and bad times you had in your four years there. The halls are quiet and empty, and out comes a teacher you never had but your friends did and liked. Eye contact is made and small talk in engaged. You brag about how great everything is going in class and all of your extracurriculars, and she seems to be pretty proud, despite the fact this is your first real conversation. The guidance counselor walks out of his office and happily joins in on the conversation, but starts to take credit for all of your success in college as if the only reason you are there is him.

The bell rings, and a flow kids you don’t recognize flood the halls. Are they freshman? When did you get so old? One of them just took something out of your old locker and slammed the door. Does he even realize that was YOUR locker? He needs to learn to treat that thing with some respect. Out of the crowd, you see one of your younger friends you haven’t talked to since you graduated. She’s completely changed. Either she has a new piercing, a boyfriend, took up smoking cigarettes or all three. Everything you know about the place where you spent your late teen years has changed, and you are disgusted.

Soon, more familiar faces start to crowd around you, admiring your new insight and experience. They ask how often you party and how many people you’ve slept with. You are their hero. You continue talking to everybody until they all leave, and you’re left with nothing to do but stroll the halls you once called home, thinking about how much better off this place was when you were there.