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Spring break -- an institution

By Michael Rosenberg

Spring break is less than two weeks away, so you can stop going to class now.

No, not really. I mean, you can, but it may not be the best idea, especially if you want to receive actual grades at the end of the term. (OK, so you can stop going to class if you're in the RC.)

But the attitude that you can stop doing work now has pretty much infected most of the student body. It's not that laziness or apathy is setting in. Those things set in long ago.

It's just that everybody loves spring break.

Spring break itself is a bit absurd. It's an opportunity to spend time in the sun, get ridiculously drunk, hang out with your friends, accomplish nothing worthwhile ... where was I going with this? Oh yeah -- the absurd part.

The absurd part is the common understanding among students, TAs, professors and administrators that, while we are all at the University to advance our education, it's important to take a week in the spring and stop. And we all stop together.

You see, college students are pretty much the only people in the world who have a spring break. High school students do too, but that's different. Spring break in high school consists of going away with your parents or staying at home ... with your parents.

Besides, high school students don't count.

Once you get out of college, you don't have spring break -- you have vacations, taken at random times with random people, to random places where you stay in actual hotels, with less than 17 people per room. It's not the same at all.

Spring break also reveals or simpler side. Today we all sit in our coffee shops reading about free will or game theory or ancient Greek battles. In two weeks, when we can do whatever we want; many of us will travel to some culturally inept town to get tan and drunk.

You have to figure that spring break didn't exist until college came around. Two thousand years ago, Julius Caesar and the boys didn't take a Chevy to Sicily for a few days in the middle of a war. In order to have a spring break for the masses, you need to first think that what the masses are doing is so difficult and important that a break is well-deserved.

There is a reason we have a different name for this vacation -- it is a different kind of vacation. In college, it is widely expected that everybody goes away together and stays somewhere random with a bunch of friends. It doesn't much matter what you do or where you do it -- spring break destinations wouldn't be considered by people going on vacation. Accountants don't spend a week drinking tequila in South Padre, Texas. Lawyers don't just drive down to Panama City, Fla. for some fun in the sun. It's not the same at all.

This stark reality is ever more apparent to those of us who are graduating in May. For while the rest of the students here are merely taking a break from their studies for a week, many seniors are also taking a break from the job hunt. We know that in three months, real life begins. Real work starts. We will be expected to work all day, relax on the weekends. If we go away, it will be alone or with one or two other people, and it will be to London or Paris, or at least L.A. or New York. We will go away at least partly to enrich our lives. That's good, but it's different.

This may be our last break of any kind for quite a while. It is pretty much the last time we can spend a week doing whatever we want and know it is socially acceptable.

Planning can be limited for spring break, too. Some people drive down to Florida without a clear idea where they are staying or what they are going to do there. They don't care, either. When is that ever going to happen again?