The Observer, December 1, 2006
Volume XXXIX, Issue 12
One Foot Out the Door: Thanksgiving elicits complex emotions
This past week most of us got a chance to retreat from campus to even more familiar territory to be around close friends for a Thanksgiving meal. Even the least festive or patriotic of us likely engaged in some sort of excessive inhalation of fattening foods prepared by family.
At some point during the meal you also had to entertain and return courtesy inquiries about how your semester and life in general is going. Any uninteresting or overly personal questions typically were deflected with an aside about the food being passed from you to another member at the table, and the few you had to answer were enough to aid the tryptophan in putting you to sleep.
A good nap and a settled stomach later and you're ready to brave what quickly becomes an even more tangled social engagement than dinner – meeting your peers from high school. The mutually enthusiastic tone of the greetings seems to imply you've meant to keep up much more than you have, but by the end of the night that seems to fade.
For the freshmen, and even sophomores, it may be an exciting outing where everyone exchanges and validates opinions about why their college is the best. But while recalling old memories with old friends you can't help but think of the more recent ones you've been making with new friends. Rather than compete, they seem to complement each other well.
For the upperclassmen it gets a bit more complicated where no single word quite captures the experience. Jeffery Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex was asked in an interview about describing shifting life course moments and responded that he regretted not having at his disposal, "complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, …'the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy.' … I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants' as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a mini-bar.'"
Even after only three years of a new place we go back on breaks to find that our high school classmates have formed into at least two different groups; some still hugging the bar stool like the last time you saw them and others anxious and eager to discuss how they have mapped out the next 120 months of their life. You try to catch yourself from sounding like a snob to the former while you – out of Case habit – get to talking about your research and graduate school. With the latter you listen to their plans, perhaps add a few questions to show you were listening and then hope they are not expecting to hear a 10-year life plan from you.
Three days later you are ready to be back at Case. Though you won't be sleeping in nearly as much, you are at least comforted to be around a student body that has rubbed off on you more than you want to admit. And when asked, "How was your break?" you start empathizing with Eugenides's desire for German train-car construction hybrids.
Ibrahim is a senior Medical Anthropology major who has just returned from a year abroad in London.
