6 Ways To Spend Your 6 Week Break
When I first heard we have six weeks off, Dartmouth’s weirdly long winter break sounded amazing to me. After all the stress of the term, who wouldn’t want six weeks to catch up with friends from home? But then as I looked at the actual dates, I realized the problem — no one else is going to be home as early as we are.
Instead of midnight McDonalds runs with my best friends from high school (I’m from Oregon, there’s nothing better to do there), it looks like the beginning of my winterim is going to consist more of me, my dog and all the shows on Netflix I’ve been too busy to watch.
While this doesn’t sound like the worst way to spend it, as a Dartmouth student I feel like I should be doing something more productive. So without further ado, here are the six best ways to spend your winterim (unless you’ve already signed up to do something like one of the Cabin and Trail hiking trips, in which case congratulations on not being as lazy as me).
1. Start/Break a habit
It takes 21 days for your brain to internalize something as a habit. Why not use 21 of these days to start eating healthier, exercise consistently or read Dartbeat every day?
2. Train your dog and take him to shows
You saw the National Dog Show Snapchat feed didn’t you? (If you didn’t, you really missed out.) Who wouldn’t want their dog to be like one of those perfectly groomed poodles or the debatably even cuter dogs that run through the obstacle courses? If your winterim plans involve binge-watching Netflix with your dog, why don’t you both get off the couch and train for a show? Or if that’s too much work, you could just go watch a dog show. Or go to a park and watch the dogs there. Better than nothing!
3. Build up your hometown’s Yik Yak
One of the worst parts about leaving Dartmouth is leaving our hilarious Yik Yak page (#poopinthesoup #neverforget). If your hometown’s Yak game is as weak as mine (the last two weeks are still in the recent page), spend some time stealing and reposting jokes from Tumblr to make the page more interesting. Maybe the top Yak will still only have 15 upvotes, but it still gives the page potential to grow. While it may be small, one person can still make a difference.
4. Practice playing pong
While it may seem sad to play pong alone at home, doing this could help you when you come back for the winter. ’18s, you don’t want to lose your newly gained pong skills over the break, do you? (Because that’s the important thing to focus on. Priorities.) You probably can’t play with Keystone at home, but that doesn’t matter since if you are under 21 you would be playing with water anyway. So, make the most of your Ivy League education and spend your winterim practicing hitting a plastic ball into some cups so that you’re better at it when you come back.
5. Erase your old blitzes
Who has the time to stay caught up on Vox Daily and the various student group blitzes when you’re busy having fun at Dartmouth? I can’t be the only one with over 100 unread blitzes, right? So if you have an hour to spare, go through your phone and delete everything you never bothered to read during the term. Hopefully you won’t find anything too important that you missed!
6. Visit your friends at college
What better way to celebrate being out of school than sleeping on the floor of a friend’s dorm room while they stress over classes and finals? If you haven’t been able to visit any of your friends at their schools yet, why not take a weekend to go stay with someone? Yes, you will be seeing them when they come home for winter break but visiting their school means you get to meet their friends and see their school. Plus, Dartmouth is clearly so much more fun than any other school out there, so it’ll make you like it here even more.