Thanksgiving Break is the time when college students everywhere come home for a few days to their suburban purgatory of a life to eat their racist grandmother’s homemade stuffing. As the UIUC students make their way back home, not only will they be greeted with a warm embrace full of hugs and kisses from their parents, but they will be swarmed by the students who didn’t join them on the journey to university. Those students are your local community college friends. Remember them?

Doug Pierce is a student at the College of River County, the local community college in suburban Chicago. No one should be home as a 19-year-old in the suburbs, but Pierce is doing it and doin’ it big. His days are filled with a few classes at the community college and then he goes straight to his 4-hour shift at the premier yogurt place in River County, Yogurt Palace.

Pierce doesn’t say much during his minimum wage career at the Yogurt Palace except for “Put your cup on the scale” and “That’ll be $6.54, sir.” He works alongside the guys who bullied you in middle school for your lunch money and that 24-year-old who still thinks he can make it in the music industry and is putting in the hours to make sure his SoundCloud gets noticed.

As one can imagine, Pierce could be a little lonely when all his friends are at state schools like UIUC. Pierce imagines university life as a montage of his best friends playing Frisbee on the Quad, hi-fiving frat brothers, and cheering on a Big Ten football team. This is an inaccurate portrayal of what university life is, but Pierce only knows things about university life from the college brochures he ended up rolling into doobies to smoke after his Yogurt Palace shift.

Nonetheless, Pierce always looks forward to vacation because that’s when university students come home and reminds his friends that he still exists and so does their friendship.

Pierce woke up the first day of Thanksgiving Break around 3 p.m., with the excitement of a small child on Christmas morning. His friend Matt Hanson is home from the University of Illinois and just texted him that he was outside his house and wanted to catch up. Pierce changed out his Yogurt Palace uniform that he fell asleep in and rushed out the door to give Hanson the hug like he was a military veteran coming home from a war.

“It’s so nice to have you temporarily in my life again, man,” Pierce said to Hanson, who was decked out with UIUC attire along with the letter of the fraternity he was pledging.

Pierce was ready for a week full of a fun, reliving the glory days of high school with his old friends because that’s when he had his shit together and so much potential.

“It’s so nice to have friends again for a week,” Pierce told The Black Sheep.

Pierce’s friends will be returning to back to their new friends and dropping Pierce as a friend once they get back to school Monday, November 30.