OMG BECKY I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN 5EVR!!!! (via nytimes.com)

Dear Kenyon,

I know a decent number of you, and a decent number of you know me; I’m that self-obsessed chick who can’t seem to stop talking about farts. We’re familiar to an extent, right? Can we agree on that? Cool.

Now that we’ve established and defined our relationship, I’m going to give you some super friendly advice.

Thanksgiving break is right around the corner. I can literally taste how close I am to heading home for a delicious, meaty dinner that it is somehow socially acceptable to eat at one in the afternoon. And I mean literally. Yesterday, I stuck out my tongue while walking to my English class, and instead of catching a snowflake, I caught a fully-cooked piece of turkey in my mouth.

A majority of us are going to be gone for a little over a week. We’ll spend our time away from Kenyon catching up with Mom and Dad, seeing old high school friends and attempting to avoid painful memories of what our lives used to be like before we set foot on this hill. Maybe we’ll forget about Kenyon a little, and that’s okay. It’s really good to get away from the stresses of academia every once in a while.

Simultaneously, we’ll be posting status updates on Facebook. We’ll be live-tweeting our Thanksgiving get-togethers. We’ll find time to sneak away from our family and send long, poorly-worded text messages to our college friends. We’ll be as connected to the great web of Kenyon social interaction as we were here at school, save for the name of our wifi network. (RIP ResNet.)

So please, when we all get back on campus after our undoubtedly delightful weeklong romp through our respective hometowns, let’s make a pact not to begin every conversation with, “How was your break?” You read my Twitter feed. You saw my Facebook photos. I texted you and told you everything my crazy Aunt Iris* said at the dinner table. Do you really need to ask?

Instead, let’s opt for more prudent and interesting conversation starters. Here are some examples I came up with just now:

• “What’s Bill Gates up to?”
• “Who’s the president of Uzbekistan?”
• “How is truffle oil made?”
• “Why do my knees pop every time I try to kneel down?”**
• “The economy, right?”

Let’s not pretend we just spent years apart with no contact whatsoever. Let’s try to confront the reality of our return from Thanksgiving break in as down-to-earth a way as possible.

We’ll probably end up getting sucked into the bottomless vortex of social convention anyway, but through our own self-awareness, we can at least do so consciously. Right?

Is that reasonable?

*I have no such aunt. All of my aunts are great people.

**This is an actual problem I have. If there are any doctors in the audience pls diagnose me thx.