Fall Break

 When I went to university a fairly large number of years ago, we had a week off in February. For the past few years, I was dimly aware that at least some universities in Canada had also instituted a week off in the fall. I wasn't sure if McMaster had one, but when Eve got accepted we checked, and they did. Today I finally googled to see when this had become the new norm - according to this article it was around 2013, and it was to ease the pressure that students were under, with increased competition for graduate school and law or medicine. Between four and ten percent of students said they had considered suicide at some point. The article also says "suicide is the leading cause of death in Canadians aged 10 to 24, after car accidents", which seemed like a weird way to put it to me, until I tried to fix it in my head, and "suicide is the second leading cause of death in Canadians aged 10 to 24", actually, that would be better, wouldn't it? Anyway. 

So we were really happy that Eve would be home for a week just six weeks after she started. As it turned out, it was maybe a bit too soon to be away from school for a week and then go back, and her re-entry was a little bumpy, but she got through it, so here is the whimsical montage of her fall break activities.

Getting smushed by Davis, who was home from McGill (and photobombed by her mom)

Meeting Davis's new bunny. His name is Angus.

Having (Canadian) Thanksgiving dinner with my parents

and Lucy

Going for ridiculously wholesome walks in the woods

I mean come on, look at this shit

Patio-ing

Doing calculus

Force-snuggling the dog




And now for some reason my blog editor is being an absolute jack-hole, so the pumpkin patch pictures will be a separate post. Try not to expire from suspense.