I haven’t spent more than three days at home for a year. The transition from living at home to being a somewhat fully functioning human starts with college and ends with calling where you’re from your “hometown” and calling your former house, “your parents house.” People may stop coming home for summers, but the holiday season will always bring people back. Here are the best and worst things about the next three weeks.

Best

– Blackboard and Duckweb are dead to you. The beauty of the quarter system is that the good, bad and weird aspects of fall term are behind us.

– You get to see people from high school and realize that nobody is as cool as you thought they were in 11th grade. Seeing your friends is awesome because you can reminisce and do things you never could do in high school, like go to bars.

– At least in Portland, everybody wants to explore the city as if they’re tourists. But it means people are down to immerse themselves in the city before going back to Eugene, which doesn’t have a zoo.

– You eat like a royal. Lorde may rework the lyrics to her song when she goes home for the first time in college. Mom and dad actually want to cook for you as well as pick up the grocery store tab. Bring on the ice cream and other delicacies you can never get yourself to buy at Safeway.

– If you have siblings, some real bonding occurs. The older you get, the more this happens, which is one of the cool things about life. Growing older means I finally understand Ross and Monica’s friendship.

– You have time to read books for fun. Plus, there’s most likely a lot more hanging around your parent’s house than in your Eugene collection.

– Winter break, especially when you don’t have a job, gives you an excuse to resemble Snorlax as much as you’d like. I’ve already watched a season and a half of Game of Thrones.

– You get to take a break from red cups and go to adult parties with delicious cheese and wine that costs more than $8. Plus you have no responsibilities and therefore have more time to get drunk with your old friends/grandma.

Worst

– Dad: “Are you going to bed?” Come on dad, I ain’t got no bed time!

– Ignorance is bliss, and getting older takes that ignorance away. Suddenly you’ve become much more aware of the strange tension between your grandma and aunt that you never realized was there before.

– Your room is a fortress of nostalgia, filled with shoes you didn’t take to college and now no longer like but can’t get rid of, signs that once graced your high school locker and a desk that you’ll never use again, but that mom uses for calligraphy every once in a while. This is especially hard if you spend a lot of time thinking about life and what everything means.

– If your parents are divorced, you go back to juggling two houses.

– Your younger siblings have actually become humans and may have serious girlfriends or boyfriends, which is just gross. But they’ll probably try to get on your good side.

– By the end, you’ve caught up with 20 people and three different TV shows and you’ve gained six pounds and you suddenly miss the rec center even though you never go. By then, it will be time to go back to school.