Rose Richard

Spring break my friends, is our just desserts. It is our payment for toiling through professors who don’t believe in the sanctity of the syllabi, professors who feel they are too good to give any grade over a C+, group projects, lame classmates, forced extracurricular activities and all the other crap that manages to happen to us in a 10-week period.

It is seven (more if your finals end early) days that are treated with much more sanctity than winter break, for we must make these few days really count. College students have no shortage of options for spring break.

If you like this sort of thing, there’s always South Padre Island (Texas) or more than one Mexican location. You can bathe in beer, tequila and vomit for seven days. If that doesn’t sound relaxing or edifying, you have just had 10 weeks of what our fair university thinks is edifying, so do what you will. It’s your money.

There are some misguided souls who can’t get enough work. They volunteer for various causes, cleaning up the Earth or something like that. Perhaps I shouldn’t call them misguided. It’s simply not fair. Maybe they relax and feel better by doing things for other people and not being selfish porkfaces like the rest of us.

However, as any regular reader will guess, I don’t have many charitable bones in my body, especially after this term. This term, in a word, sucked. That aside, I think that I would best serve my fragile mental state with laziness and rest. I don’t care where I do it, as long as it’s nowhere near here.

That said, and taking into consideration that I’m poor, I chose Canada for my spring break destination. Vegas was unappealing, the thought of spending any time on a beach with drunk 19-year-olds and the MTV spring break crew made me want to puke, and Amsterdam is still way too expensive. It is a fact that my American dollar will go further there than it ever would here. And as long as I don’t molest the locals, I don’t think my Canadian friends will mind.

I can sit on my ass all day, or I can go to the Vancouver Police Museum. If that’s too much, I can go to Stanley Park and stare at the trees, if the weather is so inclined. Basically I have seven days to work on erasing winter term from my hard drive. I have given and given this term. I don’t see how people have the energy to volunteer an entire week for anything after this term.

Another thing I will not be doing is working. For the last two years, I spent spring break at work. At the time, I didn’t care. At the time, I wasn’t a senior. This is my last spring break and I have this urge to make it memorable. Not a soaking in beer, “Girls Gone Wild” video memorable, but something that reminds me of the rewards of moderate to hard work and saving my pennies.

What I mean is, I fear impending adulthood and the guaranteed week of screwing off during spring. I have friends who’ve finished college and have “real” jobs (except those guys from the fraternity across the street. They work at Starbucks.) Some of them only get two DAYS of vacation a year. If someone told me now that I only had two days off for the whole year, I’d leave the country and resort to piracy to feed and clothe myself.

Vacations are important. Even if you just watch Mel Gibson movies (shame on you) all week or pick up garbage at the beach, you should do something, anything to keep you from running through the halls screaming in terror from the unseen (but very real) horrors that haunt you at school.

I admire those who can stand to work or volunteer over the break. I, however, chose not to and I hope you in the work/volunteer camp respect that. Just like I respect you, even though I think you’re kind of mental. Who isn’t after 10 weeks of learning about organic chemistry and colonialism?