While some people had a full schedule over their Winter break, freshman Andrew Asistin described his as “basically two weeks of doing nothing, with a lot of family oriented parties.”
It’s easy to tell when a semester is coming to a close at Fairfield. Students’ caffeine wired eyes locked into books until the wee hours in the morning, rooms once stuffed to the gills with clothes are packed up in neat brown boxes, and countdowns being performed on every other dry erase board. While most students took advantage of the time of to be with family and just relax, a good number of them had alternate plans for the mid year hiatus.
Geoff Middleton’ 08, a forward on the Fairfield Men’s Basketball team, described the time off from school as very similar to his time during school. “It was pretty much practice every day, then just hanging around with the team.”
Freshman Kendra Hussey, who plays center for the Lady Stags described her days as “playing basketball, eating and then chilling with teammates.” She also noted that the campus was really quiet and that “we weren’t even around that much. We did a lot of traveling were all over the country more than we were at Fairfield.”
Another student who also doubles as the assistant to the fire marshal, Pete Malfa’10, was on campus a lot. Malfa also had some very different opinions compared to his feelings during the school year.
Malfa, who works on his down time during the semester, came back to school about a week before any students set foot back in the dorms.
“It was really spooky. There was almost no one here, and it was really weird.” Malfa passed the time by doing inspections in Dolan (which he described as” extremely spooky”) and other buildings around campus. He noted that “when the students are gone, the town is a lot quieter and that there are a lot less emergency calls.”
Malfa was granted some company on the 12th when the Resident Assistants were required to meet back on campus.
Senior Monique Thomas, who is an RA in Campion described the early time back as mostly “preparing for the upcoming semester, and setting dates for all our events.”
Thomas added “that unlike previous years, all RA run events had to be planned prior to the beginning of the semester, as opposed to later on, which led to some more pre semester work then the previous years.”
There were some students who didn’t even stay in the country. A group of students who work with Campus Ministry were house guests to a married couple in Jamaica.
Chrissy Young’ 07 was one of the travelers and described their duties as “doing any work that required our hands and hearts.”
The group worked extensively with abandoned elderly and gave them both physical care at the Mother Theresa home in Kingston. “Most importantly though, we spent time sitting and talking with the residents who are so often ignored,” said Young.
The group then moved to a pre primary school where they assisted the teacher and spent the day playing with the children. “They very much needed our attention, and were happy to spend time with us,” said Young.
Despite the loss of one week of pure relaxation at home, Young was quick to say that “would not change (the week) for the world.” She added that “Beyond the pleasure of spending time with our group, our JamFam, I think I’m privileged to have spoken with the many people I met in Jamaica.”
For students in the same boat as Asistin, who didn’t have any countries to travel to, sports to play, plans to make, or inspections to perform were happy to return to the routine that has become college.
“It was nice to leave, but by the end of break I was ready to go back,” said Asistin.
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