Boley for the Holidays: Thanksgiving on campus

Well Jags, welcome back. I hope your break was filled with family, laughter, and intense card games. I hope you enjoyed enough beans, greens, tomatoes, potatoes… to curve your hunger through finals week.
For many, the Thanksgiving break is a time to relax and celebrate family as a glimpse of what the semester break has in store. However, for many out of state students, that wasn’t the case. I was apart of the lucky bunch of students who were unable to travel home over Thanksgiving break. At first it was intriguing to see the campus lose its life as students packed their cars last Monday and Tuesday to head their separate ways.
Once everyone had left and campus activity had officially subsided, and the few that had stayed behind retreated to their skeletal like residence halls, the silence was quite peaceful. No one above you “moving furniture” or not having to bang on your wall to signal your suite mate to turn the volume of their bounce music down. I reveled in the stylistic sounds of HGTV’s television series Flip or Flop and House Hunters. Being that this was my first Thanksgiving here at Southern University and A&M College, I was not prepared for this break. I had not prepared for the extent in which campus would be closed. It wasn’t until Tuesday that I realized that the cafeteria would be closed after Wednesday’s lunch hour.
At this point, most of the people I associate with have already headed to one of two places, New Orleans or home, wherever that may be. Therefore I had to put on my big girl pants and figure a way to eat for the rest of the week. I would say I got pretty lucky when a local ministry cooked a nice home cooked Thanksgiving meal for those of us still on campus.
They provided a nice spread of all the foods we love this time of year, and kind of gave us an idea of who would be staying over break as well.
After dinner came the real struggle. With no car, and being an out of state student with no real knowledge of how to get around in BR without one, I was pretty confined to the back of campus. I had few options of food such as Subway and Domino’s delivery, which I apparently wasn’t as tired of it as I had once stated days prior.
About Friday, the socialite in me kept inching its way to the forefront, I began to miss the “litness” of the circle when walking to Shade to get snacks.
Realizing that every time I walked through Boley’s lobby, Walter wasn’t sitting by the TV with his computer connected and playing his keyboard to hit singles he found on YouTube. Not even a talkative house parent lurking in the shadows waiting to spark conversation. I felt like I was the only person on my floor, if I hadn’t met so many new people on the elevator I would have sworn I was alone in Boley.
Besides the little visitors who kept crawling through my window, making my skin crawl, not knowing that lady Beetles creep me out. By the time Sunday arrived I was excited to hear my suite mate come back. After catching up about our breaks we decided to take a ride to Walmart. While riding through campus I was excited to see students moving about unpacking freshly washed laundry and enough groceries to hibernate for the rest of the semester. Seeing familiar faces, the socialite in me was most excited to be around people. I honestly had a pretty bittersweet Thanksgiving.
For the nerd in me, that was PRIME studying time, but for the socialite in me it was complete torture. However, if you ever plan on staying on campus for a Thanksgiving, I highly suggest you go grocery shopping before being stranded on campus for 5 days.