If you’re anything like me, you’re probably wishing for the next two weeks to go by as quickly as possible so you can get to Harvard-Yale and Thanksgiving Break. And if you’re as pathetic as me, you’re probably checking the time of your plane ticket home every time you sign into your e-mail. Here are some lessons I’ve learned recently while counting down the days until break every three hours:

1. You can be a surprisingly amazing home cook with only a microwave and hot water.

The weather is getting so cold that I’m considering hibernating until Thanksgiving break, and one of the things I hate most is the unbearable walk to Annenberg and back (I’m preemptively bracing myself now for angry scorns from those living in the Union dorms). Thanks to a recent trip to Whole Foods, I’ve solved my problem and am now stocked up on boxes upon boxes of oatmeal. I’ll probably get so tired of it that I’ll swear it off for eternity before I leave for break, but having oatmeal three times a day and never having to walk to Annenberg is currently sounding amazing (a note to my concerned parents if they’re reading this right now: don’t worry, I’m not actually doing that).

2. That accumulating pile of laundry will never disappear, no matter how much you stare at it with puppy dog eyes.

I have a shameful confession to make—I bought an inordinate amount of underwear before leaving for college so that not doing the laundry would never harm me. Unfortunately, I hit a new personal low last week—I realized that all I had left to wear were ill-fitting clothes from those embarrassing days of freshman year of high school that I for some reason brought with me to college. I stared at my hamper and begged it to be filled with magically clean clothes, but the dirty laundry never disappeared and I ultimately had to make that dreaded trip down to the laundry room. It’s okay though. After putting my clothes in the wash, I promptly rewarded myself with a Nutella-to-Go from the vending machine.

3. There is such a thing as excessive cheering for your friends at shows.

My roommate and entryway-mate were both in the Expressions Dance Company’s show last weekend, and my suite thought it would be hilarious and mildly endearing to make an obnoxiously large sign for them. Using our artistic skills, we accomplished the feat of writing their names in a straight line and pasting embarrassing baby pictures of them onto posterboard. Due to the facts that it’s likely nobody else thought our sign was funny and that we were screaming loudly every time we saw our friends’ faces, we received pretty weird stares from the people around us at the show. If anything, I’ve learned that I will forever be socially awkward and I can’t evade it, so after the show, I hung up our sign on the entryway notice board as a proud indication of my embracing this fact.