We count down the days until winter break begins, but by the end, we're counting down the days until we go back to school. We think it’s easy to say that winter break is the biggest love-hate relationship of every college kid’s life. Christmas cookies, holiday shopping, seeing your family and ugly sweater parties... the list of things we love about winter break could go on forever. But, what about the stuff we hate? Winter break is great, but it also comes at a cost. Let’s take a look at the 21 parts about winter break that we absolutely loathe.
1. You have to make up for all of the doctor appointments you've been rescheduling for the past four months. It’s finally time to get updated on your vaccines and finish up all of those ones that have like, 50 parts to them. You're 21 years old and you still want to punch the nurse when she comes at you with a needle…
2. Procrastination means you're stuck Christmas shopping with all of the crazy mall moms. As it turns out, your genius idea to do last-minute gift searching wasn’t so genius after all…
3. Your whole family wants to know how school and work and your love life is going, and the story of your overachieving cousin’s life ensues. Apparently she developed some cancer-curing medical laser. Big whoop.
4. You are so poor that you actually have no choice but to work seasonal hours at your part-time summer job.
5. You miss your roommates so much it actually hurts. You usually know what they had for breakfast and the last time they went to the bathroom, but now you're all out of the loop on their life in the past three weeks.
6. You forgot how flippin’ boring being home is; there aren't any house parties or college bars. You're so bored that you and your friends decide to do the only thing there is to do in your hometown… go bowling.
7. You keep your head down and sunglasses on when you go to the grocery store for your mom, but then you hear the dreaded, “OMG, Katie! Is that you?! I haven’t seen you in forever!” Crap…
8. Your aunt tries so hard every year to get you a great gift, but she seems to forget that sweaters with fringed sleeves and musical snow globes aren’t really your thing. You attempt to look and act as enthused as possible...
…and cue your mom.
9. Your parents drag you to their work holiday parties, because “all of the other co-workers' kids will be there, and they’re your age!”
10. It’s been a while since your mom has been there to check up on your every single move. “What are you doing?” “What time will you be back?” “Who all was there?” Now you even find yourself annoyed when she asks what you had for lunch.
11. There are always at least a few days of your break that you spend in a flu-like misery. Being home is like some trigger to your immune system; just because you're in your own bed with your mom around to take care of you, your body automatically thinks it’s okay to get sick.
12. Your relatives seem to forget that you turned 21 months ago, and they have these huge concerns about your drinking habits.
So, to protect your dignity and save yourself from getting the “responsible drinking” talk one more time, you find it easier to just sneak a few drinks when Grandma isn’t looking.
13. On that note, you have some of your worst hangovers over winter break. Between reunions with old high school friends, holiday parties, lonely wine nights and New Year's Eve, your head has never hurt so badly.
14. All of your coupled friends can never hang out because they have to go to their boyfriend’s family Christmas. You and your few single friends are left to grieve together over the millions of Instagram pictures of promise rings and secret weekend getaways to some romantic ski lodge.
15. Your mom has an increased concern about your strict Lean-Cuisine-and-SpaghettiOs diet. She gingerly leaves you “Green Monster” health smoothies on the counter in the morning and cuts up fresh fruit for you to eat before she leaves for work.
16. Your hair is practically fried from having to wash, dry and style it every night for some sort of Christmas festivity. Showering starts to feel like even more of a chore than it did before.
17. You are also running out of outfits and ugly Christmas sweaters to wear to said festivities.
18. Due to the fact that your parents'"Christmas break" is only about four days long, they're secretly hoping they can trick you into doing some weird, forgotten chores around the house, like separating the Christmas bows by color and dusting the knobs on the china cabinet.
19. All five of your cousins conveniently got the lead role of Jesus in their Christmas play, which means you have to stare at hand-painted, cardboard Nativity scenes every Sunday night of Christmas break.
20. No matter how big or small your family is, there's always that lingering uncle or second cousin twice removed you've never met. And to top it off, you can never remember his name. “Is it John? Or is it Jack? Screw it, I have no idea.”
21. Perhaps the worst part of winter break? Your parents continuously nag you to get off the couch and be productive. "You know what, Mom and Dad? I slaved over a $600 textbook all semester, living off of five hours of sleep a night. I am going to be as lazy as I want and I don’t care what you think."
Some parts of winter break are just awful, but hey, we better learn to love even those parts... because one day, a month-long winter break will be a thing of our past.