How to Deal with Your Family This Holiday Season

With winter break upon us, many of us will be back at home spending time with our families. To some of us, this sounds like a great chance to reunite with the people you love the most. However, to many of us, this is a nightmarish scenario that you have dreaded since you left for school. Have no worries, we here at Sherman Ave are ready to guide you through interactions with every family member this holiday season (And by “holiday season,” I really mean Christmas, because Hanukkah is over and there has yet to be sufficient proof that Kwanzaa exists).

Ugh. These assholes.

Dad

What to expect: You know he’s going to be an asshole from the get go. He will be asking questions about your grades before he says hello. That’s just his style. The trick here is not giving away that you regularly sleep until 1 pm and don’t go to most of your classes. If you keep the jig up, he might just keep paying for tuition.

Make sure to say: “It’s like a common Northwestern practice to drop two classes.”

Mom

Things I’ve Learned From Living Alone For A Week

It’s comforting knowing that this obnoxious girl has nobody to live with.

I’ve been living alone for about five and a half days now. Technically I have a roommate, but he doesn’t start work until September (lucky bastard), so he’s on an extended vacation on the other side of the country. When I first heard this news I thought, “oh this will be great! I’ll have plenty of time alone with my thoughts, and I’ll be able to catch up on all the reading I’ve been wanting to do forever!” But apparently I don’t have that many thoughts, and I don’t want to catch up on that much reading after all.

I guess part of me thought I would remember how to entertain myself from a childhood full of older brothers that insisted on exclusively playing single-player video games; turns out I remember less of that than what I learned in high school history.*

Anyway, all this alone time has left me bored out of my fucking mind. So much so that I’ve decided to write this article outlining a few of the things I’ve discovered out of aforementioned boredom (probably more for my entertainment than yours).