This past weekend marked the annual Furman Family Weekend. Beginning Friday, masses of parents, siblings, grandparents, extended family and friends made their way onto our beautiful campus. They watched performances, played trivia, attended information sessions, stopped in at a tailgate, went to the football game, shopped downtown and ate mountains of delicious food. For three glorious days our old home life comingled with our new one and we got to enjoy the best of both worlds.
It’s always a nice reprieve to visit with family. Your family members are some of the few people you can absolutely be yourself with. There are no masks or fronts when it comes to them, no makeup or nice outfits are required. Here I have compiled a list of just a few of the reasons why I enjoy parents’ weekend so much:
- I get to eat real food: After five weeks of eating primarily in the DH it’s nice to get out into the world and eat great meals. Don’t get me wrong, the DH keeps me solvent, but nothing quite hits the spot like filling myself to the brim with something incredibly tasty.
- I can finally buy fruit: When it’s just me shopping at the grocery store I pretty much stick to the bare minimum. The college student life doesn’t exactly allow me to splurge on such delicacies as grapes and apples, so when my parents are in town I like to capitalize on the fact that they missed me.
- I get to show them my neck of the woods: It’s been five weeks since my parents moved me into my dorm and said good-bye. In the real world that’s a short period of time, but in the college world that’s enough time to completely change. It’s cool to show them all of the things I’ve done and how much I’ve transformed since they last saw me.
- It’s an excuse to eat everything under the sun: It’s perfectly fine to eat that third cookie; this is a special occasion.
- My parents and I are scarily alike: While visiting with my parents this weekend, I noticed that we share a lot more than just fair skin and blue eyes. I learned that I got my slightly antisocial nature from them. We are each sarcastic and thrive off of commentary, we prefer to sit from afar and people-watch, and they’re the only ones who get my movie quote references.
Even though this weekend was completely exhausting and I got absolutely no work done, it was worth it. Friends from home may fade away but my family will always be my family. Like it or not I’m stuck with them. And while this weekend was a lot of fun, it was still a bittersweet moment to watch their car pull out of the parking lot as life went back to reality.
- Hanging out with my dad by the lake!
