Winter break is the new summer break. No responsibilities, obligations, or  chores–at least for the first couple of days. I love seeing my friends from home again. The weeks are filled with finding my gym rhythm again, brunch, and long nights of laughing and story telling. After a week, I start to miss my college friends and my life at college. In order to distract myself, I like to pack a lot of different events and work into the remaining time at home! Check out my list of things to do during winter break:

1. Visit all of your favorite local spots with friends!

I spend most of my winter break at home with my friends from high school and it gives us plenty of time to catch up and share horror stories of all nighters and rave/argue about the ranking of our schools’ basketball teams. I always love visiting our favorite local spots whether it be our favorite ice cream farm or a trip to the beach (and pretending my toes won’t fall off).

2. Researching internships and applying for scholarships.

So, winter break is also a good time to get some important “adulting” done. College is all about preparing you for the future. I like to dedicate an hour or two a day for a couple of weeks during winter break to research and apply for internships and fill out a host of scholarship money because contrary to popular belief, you can still get money to attend school as a sophomore or junior. Get to researching, your wallet will thank you.

3. Spend some quality time with your family.

My mom and I love shopping, mani/pedis, and movie marathons on rainy days. My brother likes a free bucket of balls on the golf course and a free meal at Buffalo Wild Wings. My dad likes to take me to lunch and talk about life: my dreams, aspirations, and goals. So, over winter break, I really try to make time to spend with my family because at this point they only get me for 4-6 weeks in a year.

4. Have a dinner (or brunch) party.

Cooking builds character and strengthens friendship. Hannah and I bake all the time and end up delivering our creations to our friends around our hometown. We even contemplated starting a group chat and charging for our creations. That was vetoed by our manager Gretchen (aka Hannah’s sister). So, instead, how cool would it be to have everyone over to cook and laugh together? Just make sure to have a menu planned so that everyone can chip in for groceries and not everyone brings paper plates. Also, have a back up plan in case you burn the main course.

5. Buy & sell your textbooks.

So, in two or so weeks, college students all over the world will go back for the “spring” semester(even though it feels like winter for about 3/4 of the semester). So, in between baking and brunching with my friends, I like to buy(shivers) and sell($$$$) my textbooks. I’m always looking for the best deals on my textbooks. I’ve been using Chegg for my entire college life and I love it and definitely recommend the site for selling, renting, and buying. They even have access codes for cheap too! And, there’s always free shipping around the time, you need to buy textbooks! Recently, I’ve been introduced to a new site called TUN [The University Network]. I checked out their Textbook Saving Engine and it compares prices on textbooks from hundreds of sites. On average, you can save over 80% on textbooks from common sites like Amazon, Abebooks, and TextbookRush. It’s definitely my new go to site for comparing textbook prices!

P.S. I also have an account with Ebates which I always use when purchasing my textbooks because you get major cash back!

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your winter breaks and I can’t wait to be blogging throughout all next semester! You can catch my new posts every Sunday, probably going live at 10 am (just in time for brunch)! What else do you love to do over break? Sound off in the comments I’d love to hear!

keep on keepin’ on,