So, it’s getting to be around springtime and you’re looking for a break. Great, welcome to Midsemester Vacation! Time to get drunk and make mistakes, only this time in a foreign location!

Sorry, people who aren’t going anywhere…

For those of you who have no exotic destination, Spring Break can feel more like an extended weekend where fun and friends have vanished into a fog of no morals and few inhibitions. You, instead, can go to McDonalds for every meal.

So, yeah, Spring Break can suck when there’s nowhere to go and everywhere to hide your shame of being poor or unprepared for a week-long blur of nirvana. It happens to all of us — in fact, I’ve never gone anywhere sunny for Spring Break (although there was a minute-long break in cloud cover on a Tuesday in 2003). As a result, I have become an expert on alternative Spring Breaks, things to do when stuck in Allendale for a week.

Such pursuits could include:

-Rearrange your apartment. Your roommates might freak when they find their living room in the dining room and the kitchen in your bedroom, but a little feng shui goes a long way.

-Learn an instrument. If picking up the guitar is as easy as movie montages make it look, you can be playing “Stairway to Heaven” backwards by Day 3. Side note: don’t pay attention to the satanic undertones.

-Two words: Shamrock Shakes.

-Wikipedia all of the presidents. While all of the information may not be 100 percent accurate (it turns out Zachary Taylor did not go by the “street name” of Zakky T), it never hurts to know a little history.

It could be said that none of these activities carry the same weight as going to Fort Lauderdale with friends, that one would not be “doing” anything, simply wasting time.

Maybe I have such high expectations of everyone else’s shenanigans that I feel the need to make the most out of what really should be a relaxing week. There is just such pressure to do — both activities and people — when really what some people really need is a week on the couch and venture outside at their leisure.

And yet, come next Monday, everyone will ask, “What did you do on your Spring Break?” Some people will ask, “What didn’t I do?” Some people will ask, “How late is too late to still take Plan B?” And some people, like me, will ask, “Was there anything I was supposed to do?”

Sometimes the most gratifying breaks aren’t the ones that include massive crowds and expensive plane tickets. Some people may call this na?Øve or boring, but I like to think of it as a sweet vacation of the go-go-go college attitude. People like me work best under constant stimulation, but I occasionally prefer breaks from being under pressure. David Bowie and Queen would applaud that; Vanilla Ice would steal it.

I just finished all of my midterms and I could use a breather.

Plus, do they even sell Shamrock Shakes in Cancun?

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