Thursday, March 5, 2009

How to Spend Spring Break (The Best Way)

Spring break is nonexistent at EMU. This is primarily for one reason, it takes place the first week of March. The first week of March is not spring for obvious reasons. Somewhere I read it was actually "mid-semester recess." This is a better term for this week which though it falls directly mid-term, is still in the middle of winter. The Monday of my spring break, it snowed, hard, in Virginia.

There are three ways to spend Spring Break.

  1. Hit all the beaches in Florida (and/or Mexico), get drunk, lay nude in the sun, party, and have an AWESOME time!!! Whoohoo!!!!!

  2. Go home where your family will no doubt have a long list of chores for you. They might actually be excited about seeing you again but they'll still make you work.

  3. Visit friends or extended family, do homework and enjoy the peace and calm. Read a book.

My spring break is the later. I get to visit family that I haven't seen in almost two years, I get to kick back and work on papers due the second half of my semester. Ideally, I would kill to visit some random place I've never been to before (that's the overseas dweller in me which can never be successfully repressed). But duty first and I do have a lot of homework and my preference is to spread a little bit of homework over a long period of time to generally avoid stress and all-nighters. This is also the overseas dweller in me, always be prepared in case of evacuation, power outages, or a pandemic flu.

Spring break is designed to be just that, a break. For me, it's a break from trying to understand an alienating culture and remember what it's like to think without external coercion. But if kicking back and getting the academic out of your mind in Myrtle Beach with all your pals works, more power to you. I wouldn't enter into it expecting to make decisions free from external coercion, just remember that.