5. A return to an (un)healthy eating pattern. Ah, the wonders of the holiday break: homemade food every night, a cabinet full of snacks, and the parents ordering pizza. Back to reality, though, it’s really peculiar how our eating habits change in college. And how our families are perplexed that one can indeed eat after 10 at night. My father gave me the weirdest look when I made up some Easy Mac at 1:30 in the morning (it was a mix of utter confusion and sleepiness – it was 1:30 in the morning, after all). Parents just don’t understand the concept of fine college cuisine. And by that I mean eating Chex Mix and Dr. Pepper as a healthy midnight snack. “Getting my whole grains through the Mix!”

4. Happy 21 years to The Simpsons. This show is older than I am (it’s also old enough to drink – at 20, Gunsmoke and Law and Order can be designated drivers, with South Park being the whiny 13 year-old at home with the babysit— ok, that analogy’s done. Sorry for putting you through that), yet I still have only seen three episodes of it. They have had a movie, but I never felt like seeing it. I could care less about Homer, Bart, and Marge. Yet, I suppose I do have to hand it to them for being on the air for more than two decades – it is not only impressive for any show to last that long, but much more impressive for a prime-time cartoon to. So, mad props to the creators of The Simpsons. And, if it were any consolation for me never having watched your show, I’d rather watch it over King of the Hill any day. God, I hate that show so much. It isn’t funny, yet always on. It’s like Murphy’s Law invaded my cable programming or something.

3. Bonus round on Wall Street. It is easy to be outraged at the actions of Wall Street bankers and executives, who displayed poor judgment in steering their collective companies through the financial crisis (actually, that’s like saying that you were involved in an car accident when you deliberately drove your Honda Civic into a concrete wall at 97 miles per hour) and still will get record-breaking bonuses this week. According to the New York Times, the five largest banks receiving “bailout” funds (Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley) have saved nearly $90 billion for bonus season. Somewhere, Uncle Scrooge McDuck is profoundly jealous of his richer neighbors, and Daddy Warbucks is having trouble trying to keep up with the Jones’s. I understand the argument that giving banks TARP money was necessary, and I supported the measure. And I was elated to find that banks were beginning to return funds to the government, as I saw it as a sign that the program, despite so much potential not to, worked. But, banks were returning the money only so they could get out of the Obama administration’s tight rules regarding executive compensation. Well, at least there’s someone clever on Wall Street. “Hey, what about this loophole? We could totally evade government control and wreck our company again!”

2. The History Channel’s newfound love for reality television. Let me start by saying that, as a Sec. Ed. History major myself, I used to love this channel. It was the one channel I could turn on at random and still have a high chance of finding something I wanted to watch (or would tolerate watching – those second world war documentaries start to get a bit tedious once you’ve seen enough of them to name the name of every military operation in the north African front by heart). But, when I turned on the channel the other night, there was something about racing. And then about logging in swamp water with a chainsaw and a gun – wait, what? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Action, fighting, swearing: it’s reality television! Add in a near-constant stream of apocalypse-themed shows, and it is clear that this channel has completely gone off the deep end. History is for documentaries and, you know, history shows. Not modern-day drag-racing families facing off in what looks like a less-commercialized version of stock-car racing.

Seriously, what kind of family has such an “intense” rivalry with another family, but decides to battle it out by racing in a circle? That’s like if my roommate and I were feuding and we decided to race Hot Wheels down a track. Actually, scratch that. That sounds completely awesome.

1. The return to college for spring. People leave, classes change, friends come and go. Why do we refer to it as a “school year,” when there is really so little to connect the two semesters other than maybe where we live, work, and eat (and even those may drastically change in the course of that month off)? It’s more than a brand new year in general – it is, for all practical purposes, a whole new school year. Good luck to everyone, and I hope the semester treats you all well.