Holiday season? Students are more concerned with making it to winter break
There are no Christmas elves and reindeers dancing through columnist Kirsty McHenry’s head this December, but statistics sums. Her upcoming exams are causing all the revelry to fade into the background. ‘It seems I’m not the only one, the UvA campus is filled with Scrooges, Grinches and Gremlins this month.’
Though the nights are long and the weather bleak, I believe that December in Amsterdam can be a wondrous time. The Light Festival ensures that even the darkest, gloomiest nights are illuminated by dazzling sculptures and installations. Shop windows display their best festive decor in the hopes of catching the eye of passersby as they peek out from beneath bundles of scarves and puffy coats. If the temperature drops low enough, there may even come a gentle snowfall; the kind which dusts the city like icing powder on an oliebol. This is the Amsterdam that exists just inches away on the other side of the glass that separates the UvA library from the rest of the world. It is a version of the city that most students hardly ever get to experience. Instead, we are forced to tear ourselves away from that spirited hustle and bustle and return our focus to the harsh gleam of a laptop screen.
In spite of the festivities, I, like most other students, spend much of December shackled to a desk, scraping together study notes and muttering bitterly to myself. With the countless holiday celebrations happening all around, I’ve started to notice worrying similarities between myself and Scrooge from A Christmas Carol (before his change of heart). Rather than joining in the revelry, I spend December perpetually hunched over as I read paper after paper. Instead of holiday cheer, anxiety over exams and assignments pervades my every moment. My life grows sombre as I toil away with the sole purpose of obtaining passing grades. Parties held by family and friends cannot be fully enjoyed with the lingering awareness that there is still studying to be done. Even my sleeping pattern has been affected; now when I try to nestle in bed, visions of statistics sums dance in my head.
Moreover, like Scrooge, I recoil at the thought of spending money. The tightness of the student budget has turned me into a miser: penny-pinching wherever possible and cringing with reluctance each time I tap my card to a pin machine. Yet this frugality is justifiable given that even the smallest extravagance – from a sweet treat from Albert Heijn to a Lebkov coffee – sends my savings into a deep depression. Once I’ve bought gifts for everyone in my family, I will likely have to declare bankruptcy. I’m beginning to think I too will have to send carol singers on the streets away empty-handed or start to hide when I hear them coming near. I can attest that there is nothing left in my wallet for the acts of kindly generosity that are supposed to brighten up this time of winter, however miserable and cheerless it may make me appear.
It seems, I am not alone in seeing myself parallelled in a character from a yuletide parable. Despite the merriment that is supposed to be conducive to the festive season, the UvA campus seems to be filled with Scrooges, Grinches, and Gremlins alike. Whatever all the holiday marketing may say about sharing in the holiday cheer, most of us are much more concerned with actually making it to the winter break than we are with rejoicing in festive magic. It’s worth recognising that, for students, December brings with it enough mental stress and financial pains to make anyone miserly and anti-social. By the time we reach the holidays the only sensation we will be able to feel is relief. But, before I can even anticipate that, I have to go ask my professor for an extension – I just hope that he, at least, has learnt the gift of giving.
