Santa’s not the only one who has to work at Christmas

So as you may have gathered from nearly every page in this issue, Christmas is upon us. It seems like only yesterday that we drifted back onto this overtly concrete campus and resumed what we knew was going to be another year of nose to the grindstone. Now, finally, we are due a respite.
But is it going to be one? In the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘respite’ is defined as: ‘a pause or rest from something difficult or unpleasant’. Personally this autumn term can be summed up my many words – a drunken daydream, a poetry maze, a whirlwind of gleeful circles and bar crawls, dancing till I dropped. But somewhere thrown in there I could definitely use the words ‘difficult’ and unpleasant’- particularly when planning essays that I have no idea how to write.

So the Christmas holidays will be a rest, then, will they? I highly doubt it. Only last Tuesday did one of my more domineering seminar tutors declare that he CBA with so much marking in May, thus was moving our 50%-of-the-module-essay deadline back to the Tuesday of week 2, next term. This increased my total number of words due in January to 15,000. Zippidy-doo-dah.

Where to begin? There go my nights out with friends, my pointless chocolate-gorging sessions in front of ‘Love Actually’, ‘The Holiday’ and other frivolous chick flicks. There go my sales shopping on Oxford Street, my time with the multiple step sisters I never see, my scintillating Scrabble sessions with the grandparents.
You may find yourselves in a similar situation, returning in the New Year only to be greeted by a freezing student house, a premature exam period that count towards an unhealthy amount of your degree, or multiple essays where you find yourself still attempting to comprehend the meaning of the question two months later.

I am dreading the thought of lugging home two suitcases of secondary reading and critical essays for each of the three essays. Are they all essential? No. Do they make me feel better about myself? Very much so.

Thus I have decided to protest. I will drink my mulled wine. I will throw snow. I will buy cheap tacky gifts (that I can barely afford on my loan) at small town Christmas fairs. I will eat a mince pie and drink a wee glass of Bailey’s on Christmas Eve, regardless of how miserably I am failing to grasp the essence of Engels, or the poetry of Clare.

And you should too, hardworking students of Warwick. Don’t allow yourselves to contemplate heading back to the library a week before the holidays end just so you feel like you’ve ‘done something’. Enjoy the festive season while it lasts, congratulate yourself on what you achieved last term, and if nothing else, look forwards to 2012 and all the possibilities it holds. Sure, the world may end. But then you won’t have to graduate after all.