8 Expectations vs. Reality of Winter Break at Home

 Winter falls with two-three weeks of cool holidays. Holidays full of memories—meeting with friends, spending time with family, and sitting at home, eating, and watching TV all day in pajamas. They say time flies when you’re having fun. If that’s real! Students far from home must pat themselves on the back for all the efforts waking all night, studying, preparing 10-page papers, and endless stacks of notecards. For successfully managing new friendships, communal bathrooms, and educational horizons. And hopefully having a little fun too. Now it’s time to wrap up study stuff, pack up clothes, and head home for winter break.

Winter break is all about fun or time to get things done and accomplish goals. Overall, everyone has some sort of expectations that sometimes get overhyped, and a lot of times reality shreds those expectations, and thus, the reality turns often disappointing.

Let’s fall to match up some winter break expectations vs. reality things;

Packing is an art

Expectations:  You believe packing is an art and you’ve mastered that. You bring 90 percent of your clothes home because you’re going to wear every day a different one to look cute all the vacation.

Reality:  For you, packing is always a nightmare rather than an art. You start packing as always, 2 hours before the train. Only because you don’t know the packing secrets, you left a pair of clothes and packed all. But the reality is, you wear the same two outfits all the vacation.

Journey to home

Expectation: Even before you leave the rented house to catch the train/flight journey to your ‘home sweet home,’ you’ve already imagined a scenic viewpoint. You think to yourself, “Yes, I am going to see every beautiful scene out there. That would be awesome!”

Reality: Well, the reality is not that beautiful. You know your luck. For most of us could be delayed train or canceled a flight, to begin with! And anyway you cannot control yourself from instantly looking to your phone. So, the most practical thing is to mentally prepare for the likely inconvenience.

Being welcomed at home

Expectation: Being home for the winter holidays is excitingly a cool feeling. Your parents, siblings, and even your dog have missed you so much. You started thinking, “They will welcome me with lots of hugs and kisses, balloons in my room, and my favorite prepared dish will be a treat. Nobody is going to order me to do what I don’t like.”

Reality: You stuck in traffic, somehow arrive home, park in the driveway, and you see your house as well as neighbors’ are just as dead as you remember it. You are welcomed as if you are still a child—they ignored your independent living effort. Your mother forgot to prepare what you expected to taste. Siblings are out and it’s like only your dog has missed you much.

Seeing old friends will be amazing

Expectation: Reuniting with old friends is a great and unique experience you wanted the most. All old friends decided to meet up this Friday night. Having free time to hang out and visit all the places where you spent your childhood. You are so excited to recall old memories because there’s nothing like having a long, laugh-filled catch-up atmosphere.

Reality: It’s hard to imagine it would ever be awkward to see your oldies. But just as you’ve been changed with time, so have your friends. Everyone has their own plans this winter break – mostly are on a family vacation. Some of them have grown with their ego and that’s what they are thinking of yours too. Things do change, but that doesn’t mean they won’t still be great.

Time to be productive

Expectation: So, nobody is coming to see you, neither you stepping out. You started thinking to use the time, “I’ll wake up at 6 in the morning. I am going to be so productive this weekend. I am going to study and prepare for every class to stay ahead of the game. Let’s mark the calendar and set targets.”

Reality: You wake up at 10 in the morning. You open your Instagram and start scrolling till your mother calls you to help clean the house for guests. Your father asked you to wash the family car so that he can pick up the guests but you somehow managed to forget. And now you have to wash it before he asks you again. “Tomorrow will be my day; I am going to study as planned.”

Who studies at winter break

Expectation: You think to yourself, “Today, I missed what was planned, but tomorrow will be my day for sure, anyway. I need to buckle down. Alarm set, study materials on the table and energy drink to keep away sleeplessness.”

Reality: You wake up at 6 in the morning as you planned. “Wow, as I planned.” You spend 1 hour trying to find the perfect spot to study until you realize, where you’ve started, is the ideal place to study—your bedroom. After a solid 3 hours of studying (Instagram stalking), you start thinking, “Who else has at least decided to study as I did? A week is enough to go through what I already know.” And you keep Instagramming.

Free time is incredible…let’s hit the gym

Expectations: After two weeks of no academic distractions you may find a gym or basketball court a worthy place to invest time and energy. Because doing something is always great to doing nothing. At least you will expect not to entertain your siblings with your laziness in the future. And take the same habit to college!

Reality: You get to the gym and its freezing cold. You started feeling lethargic for all the junk foods you’ve been eating. A disastrous combo for productivity! After 30 minutes of unwilling warm-up, you exhausted and started burning and melting. You realized you rested more than needed and it’s now hard to hit back.

The realization

Expectation/Reality: You start collecting all the good memories you’ve made with siblings, parents, and of course your dog. Realizing—why it’s better to stay at home whether “college is the best four years of your life” is true or not. It may be easy to get constantly entertained at college but home is home, home is ‘comfort.’ Even if it’s your last week at home you’ve already started missing your family and friends.