Spring Break: a time for sleeping, working, and watching every episode of your favorite show on Netflix.

That is what a college spring break is supposed to be about anyway, but, sadly, that seems to only be the case for about 50 percent of South Dakota State University students.

Unfortunately, some students have to go away during spring break to places like Florida and Cancun – some poor souls even have to go to Jamaica.

I am one of the lucky few that gets to stay home this year, but don’t get me wrong, I have traveled during spring break before.

Last year, I got to visit New York City for four days during break. Granted, this was for my job, so it was part work and part play, but I am speaking from someone that has done the spring break trip before. 

I love traveling, but the only thing that really got to me when in New York was the day that we left NYC. My work group ran into a mission group also from SDSU –  what are the odds of that, right?

Other than it being in NYC, the odds of running into someone you know during spring break are actually quite high. When I was a freshman in college, after taking a nice relaxing spring break off at home, all I heard were complaints about how people either were sunburned so bad that the -30 degrees here put their bodies into shock or that when going down to South Padre Island, they saw like 200 of their closest classmates from either SDSU or the University of South Dakota.

Shocker. This world has an ultimate capacity, and there are only so many spring break destinations in the world that everyone gets to share. This year alone I know of three different families going to Cancun for spring break, and that is just people that I know going. I am sure that there are plenty of other people I don’t know from SDSU going as well. 

Honestly, my favorite thing about spring break is actually taking a break. I, without a doubt, loved New York City, and I would go back any day. However, after surviving midterms week then going home, jumping on a plane, and trying to see everything that NYC has to offer in 3 days – after you take out travel time and coming back to just rush back into school, the trip left me with some really good memories, but even more exhausted. Who knew that a vacation does not actually lead to an extensive amount of rest time? 

Yes, I want people to have fun on spring break and I want everyone to come back safe, but I also love the idea of sitting at home in my pajamas for a few days, working at my part time job at home for a few hours a day to make some extra spending cash and actually getting away from the whole school thing.

As a senior, I am glad that I do not have any big plans this year. Yes it would be nice to go to Cancun or Florida, but Netflix just seems a bit more relaxing for me this year.

In the end, I guess I am on the fence about spring break travel; I don’t care where you go, or what you choose to do with your week, however, for your own sake, please do not come back exhausted and complaining about how being somewhere fun left you with no time to sleep. We are lucky to get a week off in the middle of the year anyway. Enjoy it for what it is and know that we are over halfway to summer break – where sleep doesn’t matter and at the end of the week you don’t have to return to the blizzards of Brookings, S.D.

Amanda is a political science major and can be reached at 

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