This article is part of our “Let’s Keep This Website Awesome Over Winter Break” Tournament series. Check out the opposing article here and be sure to ‘like’ your favorite!

Co-written with Basement Boss Alex Piliouras.

10. Get a Job, Grouch!
You’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to binge drink, eat
Hot Pockets, and occasionally sit in a lecture hall while some old
bearded guy rambles on about “phylogenetics” (from the Latin: “phylo”
meaning “boring,” and “genetics” meaning “shit a bearded guy rambles
about.”). Even (some) bars in New York City don’t have that steep a
cover. Sure, you could go the old fashioned route and a) take up drug
dealing or b) sell your body for sex, but it’s a (tiny) bit less
degrading to take a part-time barista job at Starbucks or something.
(Note: if you’re occupying something, you’d better be selling drugs/sex
while you do it. Multitask!)

9. Shower Barefoot
One of the first things you realize when you get to college is how much you took clean showers for granted. Well, maybe not clean showers,
but at least the pubes stuck in the drain were yours. Winter break is a
precious time for you to ditch the flip-flops and stand in your
beautiful, freshly cleaned shower with the bare flesh of your feet. You
can also sing as much as you want and won’t have any floormates to tell
you to shut the fuck up. Unless your parents talk to you like your
19-year-old roommate does, and if they do, you might want to reevaluate
your relationship with them. Or stop singing “Moves Like Jagger.”

8. Lie to Your High School Friends About How Much You’re Getting Laid
What you say: “Yo,
what’s good brodude!? What a crazy semester, so much to catch up on!
Shit, where do I even start? I joined a frat, and now I’m trying to
balance like 50 hot slampieces at once, haha. All these girls texting
me, thinking I’m their boyfriend. They’re all like “ooh, what are you
doing tonight?’ and I’m just like pshh whatever, ya know? Yea, anyway, I
get laid like every night now.”
What you mean: “Oh god, will someone please have sexual intercourse with me? I long for an intimate human touch.”

7. Have Mom Do All Your Laundry
Maybe
I’m just a lazy shit, but when I go home for winter break, the only
thing that offsets the agony of not being allowed to drink milk straight
from the carton for a month is that at least I have mom to do my
laundry for me. Mom, if you read this article, I appreciate you doing my
laundry and making me lunch. Also, please stop reading this before you
hit number 1.

6. Take a Vacation
If you’re like us, you spent four years in Syracuse. And as we’ve been
told by our friends, family, and dentists, Syracuse is cold. And that’s
just in August. In December, it’s the setting for The Day After Tomorrow (number
of people who like that movie: Absolute Zero). So get your friends
together, scrounge up whatever money is in your piggy bank (I presume
you’re a kid from a 90s movie) and get the hell out of wherever you are.
Go someplace where water fountains spout sangria and the beaches are
overrun with young scholars looking to have casual sex with people they
barely know. Then post the pictures on Facebook and give the album a
catchy title that’s an inside joke from the vacation, so nobody else
will understand it and you’ll look “cool and hip” (read: a douche).

5. Spend an Entire Day on the Couch
Odds are, if you’re a college student, you’re familiar with the way of
the couch. But your parents’ couches don’t have vomit stains (they’re on
the underside of the cushion; couches are like chameleons!). Your
parents also have something your dorm/apartment doesn’t: real food. I
don’t mean Easy Mac, I don’t mean Spaghetti Os, I don’t mean “I found
this under the couch it looks like an old cookie.” I mean honest to god,
chew it, digest it, I-won’t-kill-you-if-you-eat-me food. Indulge
yourself. Put on that marathon of Mythbusters, have your mom fix you a steak dinner, and saddle up for the long haul, partner.

4. Hook Up With Your High School Crush
Remember that secret crush you had in high school? The one who you
always joked with (“Know what would be hilarious? If we boned…”) but
whose ear you (not-so-)secretly wanted to lick raspberry jam out of?
Back then, it would have been awkward. But now, you see each other three
times a year and your conversation gets as far as, “Hey,” before you’re
hammered and singing “Hotel California.” And most importantly, you
aren’t the guy who wears a back brace anymore, and you’ve actually had
sex. Twice! Raspberry jam, anyone?

3. Celebrate Good Times, Come On
Winter
holidays mean different things depending on your background. If you’re
Christian, Christmas means gift-giving family fun. If you’re Jewish, it
means movies and Chinese food. If you’re Chinese, it means a double work
shift at Jade King to accommodate all the Jews. Meanwhile, Jews have
Hanukkah and African-Americans have Kwanzaa (Or do they? What’s the
deal, exactly? Anyone wanna Google it?). Thankfully, New Year’s Eve is
for everybody,
so put on your festive “2012” light-up glasses which are really hard to
see out of the left eye, crack open the champagne, and celebrate.

2. Burn Your Textbooks
They’re all you’ve looked at for weeks. You have no idea what’s going
on in the world (“Wait, Kim got a divorce?!”). But you do know
everything about your $449 textbook on molecular biology. Unfortunately,
they altered a word (at random) on every page, making your textbook
worth the weight of an amoeba turd. Hopefully, your future generations
will adapt to understand not to buy the textbook in the first place. But until that time: Textbooks Roasting on an Open Fire.

1. Masturbate Like a Wild Animal
If
you do this while at school, chances are you either live in a
single/are an RA, or you’re an insanely irresponsible roommate when it
comes to fapping. Regardless, if you want to make the most out of your
winter break, you need to masturbate like a wild animal. Seriously. You
barely got laid all semester, and since your roommate only took 9
credits and still plays The Sims, you were stuck on an unfairly strict
masturbational schedule. But you’re home safe now. Lock your bedroom
door and release the Kraken.