You come back home for Thanksgiving break filled with relief: exams are over. The next time you’ll have to do work is the beginning of winter term. Slowly, the feeling of relief drains from your body and is replaced by a sinking sense of dread as you realize that Winter Term is coming.

        Why is winter the most hated season on campus? From what I can tell, it all leads back to two things: cold weather and darkness. The cold makes going outside painful and unpleasant, which results in much more time spent indoors. This has a couple of repercussions: first, more time spent indoors means less sunlight exposure, and secondly, more time indoors can lead to spending either too much or too little time with friends. Low sunlight exposure can affect moods negatively, leading to irritability and potentially Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Also, I find that people either completely isolate themselves during the winter or do just the opposite, and constantly surround themselves with people, which can be equally harmful. The key is to strike a balance between the two.

Finally, cold weather and early sunsets force almost all practices to be held inside, and limited space forces practices to split between early and late. Early practice uses the normal Fall Term schedule, but late practices begin when early practices end. That means they start around 5:15, when the sun has long ago set. To me, there is nothing quite as depressing as setting out for practice when others are already finished and the sky is already dark.

Despite all this, it is possible to make winter term bearable. The solution to winter blues is to make happiness your first priority. Not work, not socialization, and not athletics. You have to make your choices based around what will make you happy not just day-to-day, but week-to-week and month-to-month. If a sport you’re playing is making you unhappy, quit. Try a new sport.

Daisy Fey ’18, says that it is “important to make a conscious effort to spend time with friends, doing more than just watching Netflix. Come up with ideas of fun things to do around campus together, and don’t let Saturday nights be boring, even if there isn’t a dance or big activity. It’s easy to get into a slump where you only work, sleep, go to sports and mindlessly scroll through memes, but with a little extra effort winter can be just as fun as spring and fall.” Arabella Peters ’18 adds, “It’s also so important to go outside every day for at least an hour. Go for a walk, or a run, or just take a few laps around the Circle. You don’t feel it right away, but just being in the sun makes you so much happier.”

Finally, during winter it’s imperative that you treat yourself with kindness. Allow yourself to eat your favorite foods more often, listen to your favorite music, and give yourself a break in which you spend five hours on Netflix. Allow yourself to make mistakes.