From eating classic and abstract Thanksgiving foods to getting extra hours of sleep or enjoying a breather from schoolwork, students are looking forward to Thanksgiving break next week. The nine-day break comes near the end of the fall semester, giving burnt-out students some relief from their busy lives. 

Vignesh Elangovan, a senior biology student, cherishes the “feelings of home” during Thanksgiving break. He’s looking forward to some familiar faces and the comfort they’ll bring. 

“At college, you’re away from home so much,” Elangoven said. “You barely see your parents and friends from back home, so it’s really nice coming back and seeing them.” 

The importance of family is a central tenet of Thanksgiving for lots of students. Vanshee Navani, a senior biology student, is excited for family traditions that come every holiday season.

“Usually when I go home, my family plays flag football, then we go to our cousin’s house and make different dishes,” Navani said. “It’s a four-course meal and an all-day cooking event … We make an appetizer, then we make an entree, dessert and then a drink on the side too.”

Colin Mccague, an undecided sophomore student, has a fun activity prepared for when he visits his family’s house to cope with any political tensions following the 2024 election season — bingo.

“Every year, me and my sister go to my uncle’s house where it can get a little chaotic — especially now that we’re in election year, it’s gonna get a little heated,” Mccague said. “So, I made a bingo sheet predicting all the things my uncles and aunts are gonna say this year.”

Cooking food and eating homemade dishes is another core principle of showing love during Thanksgiving. Mccague plans to celebrate with his friends by cooking a Thanksgiving feast together.

“This Friday, I will be hosting a Thanksgiving kiki with some of my friends and roommates, and we’re all gonna be making different dishes,” Mccague said. “We have a very small gas stove and limited cookware, so it’s gonna be interesting.”

Thanksgiving invites creative and abstract recipes to come to light. Dakota Portee, a first-year microbiology student, makes it a priority to make an interesting dessert dish every year.

“My mom used to have this recipe where it’s cranberry jello with pecans in it,” Portee said. “We still try to make it every year and try to maintain the same recipe, even though we didn’t know what she was doing.”

Still, many people also enjoy the simple desserts that Thanksgiving resurfaces every year, including Ruchi Nimmagadda, a sophomore data science and computer science student.

“I am going to destroy a pumpkin pie,” Nimmagadda said. 

She also plans on doing what many students plan on doing — catching up on sleep by “rot[ting] guiltlessly in [her] bed” and upping her hours of sleep to “14-plus every day.”

“It’s just gonna be eat, sleep, watch movies, repeat,” Nimmagadda said. 

Amarachi Nnodimele, a sophomore biology student, has been getting five to seven hours of sleep during the semester and is looking forward to sleeping for 10 to 11 hours during break. 

“I’m gonna go home, sleep a lot and study for an exam … avoid cooking dinner, avoid washing dishes, and sleep again. That’s the five-day plan,” Nnodimele said. Besides sleeping, she looks forward to shopping over the break.

“I’m going to go thrifting with my friends because last time I was there, I found a six-hundred-dollar jacket,” Nnodimele said. 

Blen Eshete, a first-year student in the school of computing and information, is returning home to Arlington, Virginia, where she will be frequenting the city closest to her, the nation’s capital.

“We’re going to spend time in D.C. and look at the monuments,” Eshete said, adding that her favorite monument is the Washington Monument because it’s “a marker of where you are”.

Some students are choosing to spend Thanksgiving surrounded by nature as a reprieve from the city. Sabrina Penepacker, a senior rehabilitation science student, has a tradition of hiking every Thanksgiving break, saying she travels “up and down canyons” and through “little rivers”.

“It’s a Black Friday tradition with my family [to] go to this state park called Starved Rock a few hours from my house and usually do a day or two of hiking together,” Penepacker said. “I used to not like it as a kid because I liked to go shopping, but as I got older, I really appreciated that time with my family. It’s very nostalgic.”

Tivon Lee and Elise Crow, both first-year architecture students, will be traveling to rural Indiana together to see family. Lee is looking forward to his mom’s cooking, which he said is made with “natural ingredients and more love.” 

“It feels like she’s putting her heart and soul into it,” Lee said.

Crow is awaiting a break from the bustle of Pittsburgh, touching on the frequent construction and “too much noise, too much traffic and too much pollution.” For Crow, Indiana serves as a relief from the city.

“There’s very little cars on the street, lots of corn fields and lots of open green space,” Crow said.