It’s the holiday season; everyone else went home to spend some quality time with his or her family, but you decided to stay at good ol’ NYU for Thanksgiving break. You figured it would give you some downtime to relax and mentally prepare yourself for the next wave of classes, finals and the forthcoming glorious,  five-week long winter break. NYU doesn’t kick students out of residence halls for breaks, so spending holidays on campus should be fine, right? Wrong.

During Thanksgiving break, all  other holidays when school isn’t in session, NYU essentially shuts down. Not just in terms of, “Oh, I don’t have to go to class,” but rather, “Holy moly, where the hell is everyone?” The university sends out its obligatory alert email telling students that “Such-and-such will not be open during the break” or “These services will be operating on limited hours over the holiday,” which of course, go unheeded by the lazy, general public, already tired of the flood of emails bludgeoning their inboxes.

Inevitably, everything closes for the holidays and  what started as a relaxing break becomes a mad scramble for food and anything else you can get your hands on. The dining halls close and NYU no longer offers student services. Even the gym is closed.

So, unless you have a kitchen or a friend with an oven, Thanksgiving is a pretty hungry holiday. If I had not already planned to go somewhere for Thanksgiving dinner, I would have been scraping the inside of a bowl of Easy Mac, silently dying from hunger pangs. However, the alternative to starving is even less undesirable: spending actual money on food at a restaurant. Given the tight budget of students already neck-deep in student loans, using money instead of meal swipes is extremely objectionable, especially when planning on blowing a ton of money on an extraordinary amount of Black Friday shopping.

At least there were dining halls open during Sandy. Thanksgiving break? Nothing. Yes, I understand that employees need holidays off, too, and this will inevitably lead to places closing. But I’m hungry and my meal swipes are going to waste. I don’t know if it’s my inexperience as a college first-year, but NYU should better prepare me for the important things in college, not show me that I must turn into a hoarder to prevent myself from starving during the holidays.

No, I’m not bitter; I’m just worried. If Thanksgiving was mildly terrifying, then imagine the horrors that await those staying on campus for the inordinate amount of winter break time. And really, if you have nothing else to do during the break, at the very least you could go to the gym. Just kidding; it’s closed.

A version of this article appeared in the Wednesday, Nov. 28 print edition. Matt Luo is a staff columnist. Email him at [email protected].