Life is hard, especially now.

Winter is getting colder and darker. Many students are struggling to juggle jobs, social lives and sleep schedules, often neglecting one in favor of the others.

Thanksgiving break is coming, but it can be difficult to enjoy a break from school when a trek over  mountains of final papers, projects and exams looms menacingly.

Many students will want to sleep and eat their way through the break, drowning their stresses and sorrows in turkey and gravy.

But perhaps spending Thanksgiving in a food coma isn’t the best way to rejuvenate for the final weeks of school. Instead, students should get up and actively improve their mental, emotional and physical well being.

No matter how therapeutic shopping may seem, though, joining the frenzy of materialism that is Black Friday likely wouldn’t be refreshing as much as it would be exhausting.

It’s quite possible that the healthiest thing you can do on Thanksgiving is…be thankful. This is not just some warm fuzzy notion from a Charlie Brown film; there is actually science to suggest  gratitude is really good for you mentally, emotionally and physically.

Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, psychologists at the University of California and the University of Miami, respectively, have done extensive studies regarding gratitude and its effects on our lives.

In a 2003 study, Emmons and McCullough found people who recorded their gratitude in a weekly journal exercised more, felt better about their lives and were more optimistic about the week to come compared to people who kept track of negative or neutral life events.

And it doesn’t stop with simply being thankful. There’s nothing that shows gratitude more than service to others, or giving someone else something to be grateful for.

Blair Justice and Rita Justice wrote “Giving Thanks: The Effects of Joy & Gratitude on the Human Body” in 2006 for HealthLeader, the health magazine produced by the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The article discusses the science behind doing good for others.

“An example of practicing gratitude is volunteering to help others in return for having been helped,” the Justices said. “As an experience, it is felt in the same frontal regions of the brain that are activated by awe, wonder and transcendence. From these cortical and limbic structures come dopamine and serotonin, the chemicals for feeling good inside.”

With homework and exams to tackle in the final three weeks of the semester, who couldn’t use more energy and optimism? And some serotonin couldn’t hurt either.

Don’t hide from this week under your covers. Get up, get out, say thank you and help people. There is nothing more valuable you can do for yourself and for others.

A simple way to start  and to help employees across the country is to be one less soul in line at Best Buy, ready to scratch and claw your way to the best deals of the season.

The deals can wait. And though sleeping in a day or two is likely a deserved treat, snooze in moderation this Thanksgiving break. Be grateful, be healthy and always remember that people are more important than things.

Email opinions@kykernel.com.