Although an enormous Thanksgiving dinner is the most common highlight of the quarter break, not all students spend their days in a tryptophan-induced coma. Break is a time for many things: reuniting with old friends, participating in sports, recovering from exam week, or simply basking in the glory of ten days without homework. Below are just a few of their stories.
Evan Cornell
For Evan, break was a time to relax. After leaving Rose-Hulman a little after midnight, he arrived in Milan, Ohio, just as his parents were leaving for work, and proceeded to sleep until 2:30 in the afternoon. The adjustment from Rose to home was something of a shock for Evan, who, upon waking up “staggered around confused, because there was no pressing need to complete any calculus or physics homework.” He used his time off before Thanksgiving to meet up with old friends, and Thanksgiving to get together with nearly thirty members of his family. Although his house was busy, Evan managed to sleep most of Thanksgiving Day, as well as after dinner. He enjoyed having the time to rest and relax, something that he has not experienced since starting at Rose. After Thanksgiving, though, Evan began to miss Rose-Hulman and his friends here. He was overjoyed to be back until his first calculus class on Monday, at which point the love-hate relationship with school resumed.
Christine Price
For her break, Christine visited Helen, Georgia, with her father’s side of the family. Helen, which “attempts to resemble a small Bavarian town … with more knickknack shops and American tourists” is home to the Black Forest Bear Reserve. For a small fee, she was able to both “marvel at the majesty of seven or eight different types of bears … [and] … observe man’s superiority to beasts and … our ability to enslave [them] in smallish concrete enclosures.” She purchased a tray of cut-up apples and bagels, and had a simply splendid time throwing the food down to the bears. Some bears “would stand on two feet to get your attention, while others climbed on the provided climbing objects to shorten the distance between themselves and the food, which was, to their disappointment, never human flesh.” To Christine, her memorable experience feeding the bears is proof that Georgia is “somehow capable of hosting more than funny accents.”
Mike Rooney
Over the quarter break, Mike participated in an event known as the “South Jersey Bike Polo Thanksgiving Extravaganza.” Bike polo is an little-known sport played all over the United States with fixed-gear or free-wheel bicycles and polo sticks made from ski poles and PVC pipe. Teams consist of three people, and injuries are “fairly common.” However, time-outs cannot be called and an injured person cannot be helped until a goal is scored, “which makes bike polo more of an extreme sport than you’d think.” While playing, Mike was hit in the face with the polo ball at “about fifty miles an hour, after my brother decided to backhand it. It was one of those little round plastic hockey balls, so it hurt a lot.” In addition to the main event, there was also a cookout at the Extravaganza, where Mike and his friends and family “got to eat a lot of delicious food, which was good.” Despite his facial pain, Mike thoroughly enjoyed himself.
Samantha Ellerman
Family drama happens at every Thanksgiving celebration, but it is the rare Thanksgiving in which law enforcement needs to become involved. However, this is exactly what happened to Sam. Before dinner, her cousin accidentally locked her keys in the car along with her one-year-old daughter. She had an extra set of keys, but she had locked those in the car as well. “I live in a little town,” says Sam, “so there were no cops on duty. We called the sheriff’s office and no one wanted to leave their families. So we called 911, and then the state trooper showed up at the house to get the screaming child out of the car. Instead of going inside to eat delicious food, there were forty of us standing out in the cold waiting for the cops to show up.” Fortunately, her cousin’s daughter was retrieved safe and sound, and no one else was locked in the car over the course of the Ellermann Family Thanksgiving.