Imagine this…

 You wake up late on Thursday and school is canceled. You get out of bed and it’s chilly, so you grab a blanket and groggily walk down to the living room to sit by the fireplace and join your family already binge watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. From a different room, you faintly hear A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving playing in the background. Your father is busy combing through the ads, looking for the best Black Friday deals. You can smell the garnishes of the turkey and the spices of the stuffing radiating from the kitchen and enveloping the household. You try to sneak a bite of pumpkin pie, but your older cousin catches you and chases you out of the kitchen! You are completely content, and thankful for a holiday that reminds you to appreciate the little things in life. Or at least, this is what Thanksgiving is for me!

For Annabelle Baer of Cohort 32, “Thanksgiving is a time to free myself from work and enjoy just hanging out with family and friends.”

Daniel Ben-Or of Cohort 33 says that Thanksgiving is a “chance for me to stop and say thank you, although I should be doing this every day! It is so nice to take a weekend to just say thanks to the people around me.”

So what are QUEST students thankful for?

Aditi Balachandran of Cohort 31 is thankful for “all of the super amazing faculty and friends I have met through UMD and QUEST. QUEST has been such a warm and welcoming environment for me to learn within and grow.”

Pranav Kuruba of Cohort 32 is thankful he got to establish “so many close friends through QUEST’s 190H course. I am actually doing Friendsgiving with my 190H team as well as a few other QUEST students this year!”

Lastly, Natan Oliff of Cohort 29 is thankful for “QUEST, and my dad’s one hit wonder, Thanksgiving Banana Cream Pie. I wish he would make it every year!”

Wishing everyone in the QUEST community a wonderful Thanksgiving! We are thankful for you.