We’re all counting down the days.  Soon, classes will be over and we’ll be at home with our families.  Our first break of the semester will be a week-long Thanksgiving break before Finals week.  But before we celebrate the end of the semester and the holidays that follow, let’s back up for a moment to that one oh-so-overlooked holiday smudged right between Halloween and Christmas.  Before you ask the answer is ‘yes, there is a holiday in between Halloween and Christmas.  You remember the one.

It’s about turkeys and pilgrims or something.  All jokes aside, though, I am actually come from endangered species of people who think that Thanksgiving is better than Christmas for more than just the fact that we get to eat like its Christmas before it’s actually Christmas.  I enjoy that we get to set some time aside every year to look back on all of the things that happened and just be grateful; grateful for loved ones, grateful for life, grateful for blessings.  Also on the note of my being a social outcast, while most people consider 2020 to have been a complete disaster, I’ve had one of the best years of my life so far.  I got to connect with my family in a way that I never have before.  I found a new hobby.  I indulged in some old hobbies.  I actually had money to buy things that I wanted.  I started my sophomore year as a college student.  I got to be roommates with my best friend.  I made new friends.  I stayed connected with old friends.  Classes are almost done with which means the semester is almost over which means I get to go home.

Winter break is eight weeks long.  These are just a few of my favorite things about 2020 so far.  Sure lots of bad things happened, too.  But if you dwell on the negative too much you’ll never be able to see the positive.  It’s finding the small victories and relishing in them.  That is something that’s so important to remember, now more than ever.  I hope that on Thanksgiving, when you’re sitting at the dinner table surrounded by every device you own with each of your relatives’ smiling faces zoomed into dinner, that you’ll be able to sit back, find those small victories throughout the year, and be thankful for them (because we would have all gone insane a long time ago without them).