Spring break: a time for adventure and traveling

Christian Gonzalez/ Staff Writer

On far too many occasions I’ve written about uncontroversial topics like race relations, Donald Trump, or the civil war in Syria.

I think it’s about time that I tackle a truly difficult question: what are the best things to do during spring break?

Proud party-animal that I am not, I will probably spend most of my break getting ahead on my homework.

The deadlines for menacing research papers loom ahead and rapidly approach; better to start perusing Wikipedia for content now rather than later. But if I could travel somewhere, I would prefer to do that.

If I lived away from home, though, now would be the time to visit relatives. I was curious about what non-Miamians did for their spring break, so I asked a few FIU students about their plans.

Michael Carabello, a senior double majoring in political science and economics, said “I’m originally from West Palm, so ever since coming to college here at FIU I’d go visit my friends back at West Palm. Before I came to Miami I’d go out with my friends, see movies, stuff like that.”

Carabello’s ideal spring break vacation, though, would be to “travel to Europe and win a million dollars.” If only!

Unlike Carabello, Beeta Rezakhani, a junior majoring in international relations, doesn’t use her spring break to visit family.

Her family lives in Boca Raton, she said, and because of how relatively close it is to Miami, she’s able to drive up once a month. So, instead, she said, she prefers to use her time off to travel.

“Typically I like to go out and travel,” she said. “So, a typical spring break would be going on cruises. Cruises are fun; you get to knock out like three countries at once and go boating.”

As for her ideal spring break get-away, Rezakhani said, “Ideally, I’d go to Maui or get my friends together to go island-hopping in Asia.”

Students that come from other Florida cities most likely feel the same about spring break as Rezakhani does, but, what about the native Miamian?

Nick Zapata, a senior Miamian majoring in psychology, said that traveling for spring break is always on his things-to-do list.

“Usually, I like to travel, get out of Miami for a little bit,” Zapata said. “Last year, I went to Washington, D.C., and the year before that I went to Gainesville to visit my friend who studied at UF. I like to get out of Miami for spring break.”

The small sample size notwithstanding, there’s a word that describes the common trend of the answers I received: wanderlust.

I had often seen the word on Instagram pages, but only recently did I look up its meaning. As per Merriam-Webster, wanderlust is “a strong desire to travel.”

Of course, we college students do have a strong desire to travel. We get to have fun, experience, and enjoy some more freedoms when we go off on adventures.

And it seems being a Miamian as opposed to someone from another city does not seem to make much of a difference!

 

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The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of Panther Press Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community.

 

Photo taken from Flickr.