The Effects of Thanksgiving

Today is the day before many students plan to leave for a well-deserved Thanksgiving break. I find myself in the Athletics Center, listening to all different kinds of athletes talk about what their plans are. I see some football players sitting on huge red couches, wearing baggy black shorts, and tight-fitting t-shirts that say New Mexico State Football.        I can hear one of the players talking about how he lives so far away, his mom had to buy him a plane ticket home.  The fact that he mentioned his mom makes the other players around him laugh.

“You mama’s boy!” The player sitting closes to him says while laughing out loud. After a few minutes, one of the other players says

“Now that I’m senior, it’s pretty weird goin’ home. That’s why I’ll probably just stay here, I’ll the apartment all to myself!” He says happily.

“Yeah, yeah” one guy says with a deep voice.

“When I was a freshman, I always went home all the time, not I just call my parents like once a month and just hang out here”. He says with a deep chuckle.

“Well if you stay here that you don’t get no good food!” The player across the room said. I quickly realized that none of them had any homework out even though it was study hall.

After about twenty minutes of this conversation, the football players decided to pack up and leave to go get Lotta Burger.

Soon, after they left, three girl athletes came in. They looked like they just came back from practice, because they were all wearing matching crimson workout clothes with their long hair pulled back. They all sat around the large table in the front of the room, and all three of them immediately pulled out their computers. It was obvious that they were much more dedicated to their schoolwork. One of them put in her headphones right away to listen to music. I could hear her music playing from where I was sitting, so she must have been playing it really loud. The song I could hear was upbeat, and it sounded like a woman’s voice coming from the headphones. Occasionally, the girl would mouth the words to the song or sway her head to the beat of the music.

            The two other girls did not talk at first, because they were focused on their homework. But after about fifteen minutes, one girl slammed her pencil down in frustration and said

“I am the worst at math! I give up!”

With that, the girl with her headphones in turned off her music, and they all stopped doing their work.

“I just cannot WAIT to go home! I am SO excited.” The headphones girl said. She began to jump up and down in her seat with excitement. Clearly they were done with homework too. I looked around and realized that they were the only people in study hall room, which is normally packed around this time. Thanksgiving Break must be starting early.