1.) You have to take public transportation to get home

While some people may be lucky enough to get their parents to pick them up from school, most students are forced to take the train or bus back home, which is actually the worst. There’s nothing more terrible than being stuck in a small place with a bunch of peasants and crazy people who smell like Campbells soup.  And most of your weekend is spent traveling to and from school so you don’t even really ever get to enjoy being home.

2.) You have to balance enjoying yourself with actually getting homework done.

Columbus Day Weekend is such a tease. You think you have an endless amount of free time, but in reality you don’t have any. For some reason, teachers like to pretend that you don’t have fun things to do during the weekend so they assign hours of homework.  And it doesn’t help that Columbus Day weekend is right around midterms which can make the weekend a lot more stressful than it should be.

3.) You  run into all the people from your high school that you can’t stand and hoped you would never see again.

There’s nothing worse than going to the gym during Columbus Day weekend and seeing someone you know from high school. It’s so horribly awkward and you either have to engage in awkward small talk for 30 seconds or pretend that you have no idea they’re there. I usually choose the latter.

4.) You have to divide your time between the people you want to see and the people you feel obligated to see.

When you get home for the long weekend, you are expected to see everyone. It’s so unnecessarily stressful to have to make plans with people and I always find myself stuck having lunch dates at Panera with people that I’m only sort of friends with. As a result, you end up not spending as much time with the people you actually enjoy seeing  because you have to “catch up” with all of the people from high school that you’ve lost touch with but still pretend you’re friends with. You also have to factor in family time, so by the time the weekend ends you realize you’ve only seen your best friend once and that it may be months before you see them again.

5.) You miss everyone all over again.

At school, it’s easy to distract yourself with classes and clubs and not realize how much you miss your friends and family. But as soon as you come home you are reminded of how much you actually love your friends and how they are a breath of fresh air compared to your school friends. And when the weekend ends you have to say goodbye to them all over again. It’s homesickness all over again. Sometimes I’d rather just skip going home just so I wouldn’t know what I’ve been missing out on.