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Thanksgiving is a weird holiday. Freshmen go home, seeing their friends often for the first time since they left. Couples are reunited, parties had, stories recounted.

However, whether you’re a freshman or a senior, little changes about Thanksgiving break.

In relation to members of the opposite sex, Thanksgiving is a change period of sorts, where decisions are made and mistakes too.

Relationships on the rocks are tested, and many end during the break.

Relationships that are going well may become more serious. Either way, choices are made that can then not be discussed because of impending exams. For freshmen, this will happen to a significant number of relationships, and it will be their first experience of the Turkey Dump.

I remember when I was a freshman, and over Thanksgiving, the members of the class ahead of me in high school were having a huge party.

Everyone in the school system I’d been a part of knew about it, and was planning on going.

At the time I had a boyfriend, who came with me, but many of my friends ended up hooking up with the guys they had been into in high school.

This holiday gives people the excuse to let their inhibitions go. Everything can be blamed on the stresses surrounding the weekend, from family issues, to finals, to friendships.

Thanksgiving is the great American drinking holiday. Everyone thinks their family drinks the most, in an attempt to drown out the folly of large family gatherings, politics, family dynamics, and the idea of making enough food for a small country.

The truth is however, that the people who drink the most are us, the kids home from college for a couple of days.

We drink with family, and then go out and drink with friends. Parties and bar hops abound.

More often than not, alcohol gets the best of people at the holidays, and Thanksgiving is definitely not an exception, more like a rule. “Home” suddenly takes on the feeling of a vacation, giving us allowance to do things we wouldn’t normally do, because school is now “real life” and home is where we go to get away.

So having now passed Thanksgiving, we face the Turkey Slump.

Pretty much, coming back to campus is a huge downer, because Thanksgiving preempts the onslaught of term papers that precede exams.

The memory of what we did over Thanksgiving might press down on us as we study for exams and say goodbye to our friends for the semester, or it might make us excited for the future.

Knowing that even though we thought it was a good idea at the time, a lot of what happened over the short break will come back to us over winter. There’s not much to look forward to after the break except the impending month-long one in December.

So welcome to Turkey Slump, whether you experienced Turkey Dump or Turkey Drunk. The next few weeks will be both hell, and a party, as we prepare for exams.

Everyone needs an outlet, and parties during exams turn the same kind of ruckus as Thanksgiving break. The key is to be smart and careful, and not worry too much about what happened over break; there are bigger and better things to come.