Thanksgiving and Christmas truly are the most wonderful times of the year.
My parents, however, may not feel the same way.
Going home for Thanksgiving break was extremely necessary after one of the busiest semesters I've had in awhile.
With Auburn having a week off of school, I was home before most of my friends.
This gave me time to spend with my family before the influx of college students came back into town, and after that I spent most of my time with my friends.
My parents tolerated my scattered schedule and lack of productive plans for Thanksgiving break because it was only a week and they hadn't seen me in awhile.
Christmas break is an entirely different story.
It is my belief Auburn students could benefit from having a shorter Christmas break.
With more than a month off for Christmas break, this can be difficult for out-of-state students like myself.
It's that awkward period of time where you're home for long enough that if you don't get a job or have some sort of plan, your parents get mad at you for just laying around and watching Netflix all day.
It's also too short to apply to any sort of real job.
No company wants to hire someone so as soon, as they are finally done training the person it's time for them to leave and go back to school.
When I'm at school, my parents say school is my job.
My job is to make good grades and to get involved in as many things as possible to help my resume and hopefully find a good job after graduation.
Instead of having a paying job at school, I have devoted my time to working for two newspapers and joining organizations.
Over the past three years, Christmas break has always been the constant battle of my parents telling me to get a job and me telling them that it's almost impossible to get a job anywhere for a month unless you've already worked there in the past.
Over previous Christmas breaks, I have worked at the Sportsclub Kids Camp.
They allowed me to work there because I had already worked there for many summers before that, so training me was not an issue.
It's a great job, but it is only about two weeks or less of Christmas break, so I still had a lot of down time.
I have other friends who go to Washington and Lee University who just have a little bit more than three weeks off from school for Christmas break.
Other universities have a similar policy, such as the University of Georgia, which only gives students an 18-day break.
That is still a long time to be idle, but it's short enough where your parents haven't really gotten tired of you being home yet.
I love going home, and I love seeing my friends and family.
However, there's only so much laundry and house-cleaning I can do so I don't feel like a freeloader to my parents before I start getting restless and wish I could come back to Auburn where I'm busy all day, every day.
Babysitting is always another option, but that's not a consistent job for the most part and it's you and every other college student home for the holidays fighting for the same families.
I'm not saying that we should have more class days. However, if Christmas break was shorter, the University could push graduation back to an earlier time to make up for the difference, which would give students more time to work after they graduate.
Kailey Miller is a community writer at The Auburn Plainsman. She can be reached at community@theplainsman.com
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