Moans, groans, and friends reuniting fill the hallways when spring semester commences, with some being excited to be back and others dreading the next 15 weeks.
Some students enjoy going home for the month to decompress, spend time with their families, and see their goof-ball friends that they have had since grade school. Others would rather be here, in

Wilkes-Barre, where parents aren’t part of the equation.

While also having a lot of students on Wilkes’ campus that are from out of the country that do not have the ability to visit family over the holiday season.
Whichever is preferred, there are always perks and fallbacks with the winter semester ending, and classes resuming a month later. When asked about what is the best part about being at home, Pharmacy student Sabrina Brennan says that her favorite thing about being home is, “being able to relax and see her dog and family regularly.”

With Brennan being a pharmacy major, she was not too excited about the workload that comes along with the spring 2017 semester but she says.
“Being reunited with my school friends is always the best part of coming back,” she explained.

Lots of students use the four-to-five week hiatus from school to build their wallets back up by working long hours. I personally worked about 55 hours per week in retail to make sure that my funds were sufficient for the semester to come.
Working retail ruins part of the holidays but at the same time it is rewarding to get that paycheck. Students like Senior Nick Coyne also worked a grueling amount of retail-hours during the holiday season.

While still balancing friends, and family activities he worked about 27 hours per week at Tommy Bahama.
“I worked so I could buy Christmas presents for people! My favorite part was that it wasn’t school!” Coyne says.

And knowing Coyne, it is not hard to believe that another part of work that he enjoyed was the people.
“Helping other people find Christmas gifts for their loved ones,” Coyne explains.

There were also some of our Colonels that did not get as long of a break as the rest of us. Lots of athletes had to come back to Wilkes- Barre early from enjoying their time off to start the season back up! Senior Forward, Emily Meinhart explains.

“Going home for break meant I finally actually got a break, but I took the ‘break’ a little too seriously so it was good to get back and start to play again, Coming back early from break serves as an athlete’s job over break since their time is also cut short from family and friends,” Meinhart says.
In all, it is very obvious that the surrounding restaurants and establishments strongly enjoy the students of Wilkes coming back since we make up a lot of their customer base.