In the weeks before Thanksgiving, I was shocked by the amount of food people were giving out. My emails were flooded with a new event each week. A Thanksgiving buffet supported by the Moravian Activities Council, a Moravian University Thanksgiving dinner, and a cultural potluck led by the South Asian American Alliance and the Muslim Student Association.

I was surprised at the sheer amount of food students were getting before Thanksgiving and all of it, to my knowledge at least, was free. Heck, one day, I was hungry and didn’t want to cook anything, and I showed up to one of these events and ate a full meal. 

Now, in high school, the most we would do before break is say “Happy Thanksgiving.” Maybe, if we were lucky, we’d go and make finger turkeys, but even that was a commodity. Now, my expectation going into Moravian was the same thing, but to my surprise, we have a lot more activities.

I think that high school gives us some predetermined expectations about college. I’d always remember the phrase, “That won’t fly in college.”  I remember my teacher saying, “You’ll be adults in college, so better start acting like it now.” Well, ma’am, I’m loving the free food and Thanksgiving coloring pages. 

Even my parents would buy into this notion and make it seem like college had two extremes, one extreme being that college was a place to study. The other is that if you don’t study, you’re partying all the time. 

Well, guess what: there is such a thing as moderation. Events like a cultural potluck or a buffet allow students to not only connect with each other but also for them to relax from the day-to-day stresses of college. The fact that our clubs and university put on these activities gives us a chance to do that. 

While this is probably commonplace among colleges and universities, I’d like to iterate that this is still a change for students coming from high school. I think that students like myself get these predetermined beliefs about what college is going to be like, and when we get here, it’s actually a different experience. 

Also, I feel that these events allow us to be kids for a short while, where we just enjoy some food with a couple of our friends and play little games here and there. Being an adult all the time can be tiring, and I think that we should let ourselves loose sometimes and enjoy what life has to offer.