Chicken Soup for the College Soul Read online

  One night while standing at a party, you turn to your friend and say, "Are you ready to go home?" Then you realize you're referring to your dorm, that place that seemed so cold and ugly the first week. Well, they must have turned the heat up, or repainted or something. You still wear shoes in the shower, but you and your friends know it's just because of those people on the next floor.

  You can't be too careful.

  Lia Gay and Rebecca Hart

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  Deck the Halls

  Christmas at my house was always a major event. My mom insisted that we play Christmas music and only Christmas musicall the time and starting two weeks before the ''big day.'' We'd bake Santa-shaped cookies and give them to our friends and neighbors. Every year, my sister and I decorated the house with porcelain figurines that had been in the family for eons. Each year we'd track down the perfect tree at the local "U-Cut" Christmas-tree farm.

  Of course, I'll admit that there were times when the mere thought of spending yet another Saturday listening to Bing and Mom crooning "White Christmas" made me want to stuff a stocking down any songster's merry little throat. And the prospect of my annual fight with my sister over the ideal shape of a Douglas fir was about as appealing as, say, running into Steve Urkel under the mistletoe.

  Then I went to college. Sure, there was no curfew, no obligatory family dinners; but when December rolled around, there was also no baking, decorating or music. Just the exam panic and 3:00 A.M. diet soda binges. By December 13, with ten more anxiety-filled days to go before my last final, I was totally depressed and desperately homesick. I decided to take action.

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  "This stinks," I declared to my equally stressed-out roommate. "Put down your highlighter pen. I need a little Christmas, right this very minute. Carols at the window, candles on the spinet!" It was bad. I was leaking sappy Christmas tunes from home, and I knew I had to do something about itquick! Luckily, my roommate was feeling the same way. We both tossed our books aside and prepared to outdo Macy's with our version of Christmas cheer.

  In a Martha Stewart-like frenzy, we fashioned red and green construction paper into signs that read "MERRY XMAS" and taped them to our walls. Then we cut snowflake wannabes from typing paper and made our own winter wonderland. We microwaved popcorn, strung some of it, ate most of it, and then hung the strings artfully around the room.

  Finally, we stepped back to examine our work. Something was missing. Andy Williams singing "Joy to the World"? Antler headbands? No, duhlights! So we grabbed a cab to the nearest discount store and bought miles of multicolored bulbs.

  Back in our room, we went through three rolls of duct tape trying to get the look we so desperately craved. Around the door, veering erratically across the ceiling and up the window, we fashioned an Impressionistic Christmas-tree shape. When we plugged the lights in, it was a sight to behold. I popped a Christmas tape that my mom had sent me into the tape deck, and the moment was complete.

  To further foster the feeling of Christmas, I insisted that the group of girls on my floor do a secret Santa gift exchange. Everybody drew a name out of a hat and bought that person a gift. Then we all got together, opened our presents and tried to guess who our secret Santa was. Sitting there in a sea of shower gels, posters of cute guys and Lifesaver's Sweet Storybooks, I started

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  choking up. It was at that moment I realized how special, wonderful and beautiful my mom had made this holiday for all of us in our family. It was a part of me, even if I was locked in a dorm with a bunch of girls cramming for exams, I had to have it.

  Sure, it was Christmas college-style with Rice Krispy treats instead of rice pudding, and Pearl Jam instead of the Hallelujah Chorus; but we were stuck at school, and we got to create our own traditions. I'm a senior now, and we still do the secret Santa thing. My roommate and I have also lugged boxes of ornaments and hauled nasty-looking fake Christmas trees around from dorms to two apartments, but as long as I live, I will never forget our first heartfelt, makeshift college Christmas.

  Melanie Fester

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  A Letter from College

  Dear Mom,

  $chool i$ really great. I am making lot$ of friend$ and $tudying very hard. With all my $tuff, I $imply can't think of anything I need, $o if you would like, you can just $end me a card, a$ I would love to hear from you.

  Love,

  $u$an

  P.$. Thank$ for $ending the $weater.

  Dear Susan,

  I kNOw that astroNOmy, ecoNOmics and oceaNOgraphy are eNOugh to keep even an hoNOr student busy. Do NOt forget that pursuit of kNOwledge is a NOble task, and you can never study eNOugh.

  Love,

  Mom

  P.$. Thanks for your NOte!

  Adam Christing

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  The Times I Called Home from College

  When I got off the plane

  When I met my roommate

  When I had to select a long-distance phone company

  When I wanted my stereo sent to me

  When I fought with my roommate

  When I needed money

  When I needed to know how to make mashed potatoes

  When I put liquid dish soap in the dishwasher

  When I wanted to know how to get soy sauce out of rayon

  When I got in a car accident

  When I failed a test

  When I met a special girl

  When I lost a special girl

  When I got lonely

  When I got a kitten

  When I got fleas

  When I didn't want to study

  When I needed money

  When they sent me a care package

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  When I got a good grade

  When I got published in the school newspaper

  When it was my mom's birthday

  When it was my birthday

  When I needed help moving out of the dorms

  When I changed majors

  When I changed majors again

  When we won the big game

  When we went to war in the Gulf

  When there were riots

  When I gave up meat

  When I wanted my parents to give up meat

  When I needed money

  When I got the flu

  When my parents had an anniversary

  When Grandpa died

  When there was an earthquake

  When I met someone famous

  When I needed money

  When I got a night job

  When I needed advice

  When a friend from high school got cancer

  When I felt no one understood

  When I wanted a ticket home

  When I won an award

  When I needed a relative's address

  When I ran out of stamps

  When I wanted some homemade cookies

  When I needed money

  When I just wanted to tell them I loved them

  Scott Greenberg

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  The Long Road Home

  I find myself packing again. Well, let's be completely honest, this isn't really packingit's shoving three weeks' worth of dirty clothes into a suitcase and having my roommate sit on it so I can get it to close.

  This time is different; this isn't the same nostalgic trip down memory lane as when I packed before college. This is the "night before my first trip home frantic pack." So you get the ideamy plane leaves in two hours, and no, college didn't teach me to procrastinate. I was experienced in that art long before I stepped onto my college campus.

  So now that I'm packed, I have a minute to examine my emotions about my first trip home. I'm excited. My best friend, Matt, picks me up, groggy, for our 4:00 A.M. drive. My expectations are that I am going home to what I left: my parents, home-cooked meals, friends with whom I shared distinctive bonds and my long-distance boyfriend, whom I have been d
ying to see. I am happy at college, but a trip home, to my family and friends, sounds like just the thing I need to prepare me for the prefinals crunch.

  I think I will catch up on the missed hours of sleep on the plane. Instead, I look around and realize that most of the

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  exhausted passengers are students just like me. Below us, in the cargo bin, sits a year's worth of dirty laundry at least.

  I miss my connecting flight, so I am later than expected. I step off the plane to find my mom frantic, thinking I had been "abducted" on the trip home. I look at her puzzled. I guess in a mother's eyes there is no logical explanation for being late, such as the obvious flight trouble. I assure her that I am fine and that I don't need to fly as an "unaccompanied minor" on the way back.

  A few hours later, I'm back at the airport, waiting for my boyfriend's arrival home. He steps off the plane with the same groggy but excited look I wore hours before. We drive over to see my dad, who seems calmer than my mother had been. I ask to see my room, expecting to find my shrine, my old pompoms, prom pictures, candid photos of friends and dolls scattered about. To my surprise, everything is gone; there's not even a trace I had ever lived in the room. I'm starting to wonder if I really had been abducted on the way home. It's as if the second I became a "college" student, I had ceased to exist.

  I start to wonder what else had changed since I'd been gone. My parents are in an awkward transition, wondering how to treat me now. They wrestle with whether to treat mestill their daughteras one of them, an adult, or as the child they feel they sent away months earlier.

  I run into two of my best friends from high school; we stare blankly at each other. We ask the simple questions and give simple, abrupt answers. It's as if we have nothing to say to each other. I wonder how things have changed so much in such a small amount of time. We used to laugh and promise that no matter how far away we were, our love for each other would never change. Their interests don't interest me anymore, and I find myself unable to relate my life to theirs.

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  I had been so excited to come home, but now I just look at it all and wonder: Is it me?

  Why hadn't the world stood still here while I was gone? My room isn't the same, my friends and I don't share the same bond, and my parents don't know how to treat meor who I am, for that matter.

  I get back to school feeling half-fulfilled, but not disappointed. I sit up in my bed in my dorm room, surrounded by my pictures, dolls and mementos. As I wonder what has happened, I realize that I can't expect the world to stand still and move forward at the same time. I can't change and expect that things at home will stay the same. I have to find comfort in what has changed and what is new; keep the memories, but live in the present.

  A few weeks later, I'm packing again, this time for winter break. My mom meets me at the curb. I have come home accepting the changes, not only in my surroundings, but most of all in me.

  Lia Gay

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  Breakdown of Family Traced to Psych. 1 Student

  It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.

  John Wooden

  There is no joy quite like a visit from your college kid after he's taken half a semester of Psychology 1.

  Nosirree.

  Suddenly you're living with Little Freud, and he's got your number. With all this education, he now knows that a) your habit of washing the dishes after each meal is obsessive-compulsive, b) you smoke because you're orally fixated, and c) you're making terrible mistakes raising his younger brother.

  No behavior escapes Little Freud's scrutiny. The simplest conversations take on profound and incomprehensible meaning.

  Getting Little Freud out of bed in the morning, for example, suddenly becomes a control issue:

  ''It's past noon,'' says the simple-minded mother. "Why don't you get up?"

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  "Mom," says Little Freud in a voice fraught with meaningful implication, "you're obsessing. You shouldn't dis-empower me this way. Why allow my behavior to affect your own sense of self? Besides, I have to stay in bed for a while to experience the consciousness of my being when my being is in nothingness."

  "That's easy for you to say," says the simple-minded mother. "But I say you're sleeping. Now get up and help rake the leaves."

  "Classic transference," says Little Freud in such a way that the simple-minded mother can only conclude she must have a psychic ailment as repulsive as fungus.

  Little Freud also knows now that nothing is as simple as it might seem. Calling him to dinner can set off an analysis of your childhood:

  "Dinner's ready," says Simple Mind.

  "Don't you think it's time you stopped taking your Oedipal rage out on me?" asks Little Freud. "Just because you could never lure your father away from your mother is no reason to resent me."

  "What are you talking about?" asks Simple Mind. "I said it's time to eat. What does that have to do with Oedipus?"

  "In your unconscious, you associate food with pre-Oedipal gratification, which sets off a chain of associative thoughts leading straight to your rage, which you cannot acknowledge and, therefore, you transfer your hostility to me."

  "Be quiet and eat your dinner before it gets cold," says Simple Mind.

  "Aha!" says Little Freud, triumphant. "You see? Classic regression."

  Little Freud is also a skilled marriage counselor now that he's done so much studying:

  "I think it's time you two confronted your feelings," Little Freud tells his parents, who are simple-mindedly

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  enjoying a bottle of wine in front of the fireplace.

  "We can't. We're playing cards," says Mr. Simple Mind. "Your mother and I have a policy against confronting our feelings and playing cards at the same time."

  "Classic avoidance," declares Little Freud.

  Little Freud is at his most eloquent, though, when he points out how wrong his simple-minded parents are about their method of raising kids:

  "You're not parenting him properly," says Little Freud of his younger brother. "You're too permissive, probably because you're projecting your desire to be free of the shackles of your own stifled childhood."

  "What are you talking about?" says the simple-minded mother, who is getting pretty tired of asking Little Freud what he's talking about.