Saving for spring break

By the time March arrives, students who have chosen to go somewhere for spring break have already spent months organizing their plans. Everything from where to go, how they’re getting there, and whom they’re going with is all memorized in the part of their brains that used to be dedicated to school. The amount of preparation that goes into this carefree week probably is not surprising to anyone, but there’s an element of preparation that often goes unspoken of: saving up the money to go in the first place.

Clearly, spring break trips are not cheap; with only one week to get as far away from school as possible students typically head to the seas on a cruise, pack a car together for a road trip down to Florida, or take to the skies and fly to another state or even country. But no matter what the destination is, there is no doubt that at least a few hundred dollars are going to be spent. So even though it may seem like an oxymoron to say, spring break involves a lot of hard work.

Personally, I have the good fortune of heading to California for my last ever spring break trip. But for the past few months leading up to March I have had to put in more than a few hours at Virginia Tech’s dining halls to make sure that I have enough money to afford fun and fish tacos in the California sun. For me this has meant long nights of cooking food, serving it, cleaning the entire kitchen, and at the end of the night returning to my apartment to finally start on some schoolwork. But I’m certainly not a special case.

Virginia Tech’s dining halls and many businesses in Blacksburg are filled with hundreds, even thousands of students that are all working week after week to save up for a memorable spring break. Plane tickets, cruises, and similar expenses all come with an upfront cost that often has to be paid months ahead of time in order to reserve a spot and ensure the cheapest prices available. So naturally this means that some students started working all the way back in early fall semester for a trip that takes place at the beginning of March.

If this all seems like a lot of work just for one week, it is because it certainly is. But looking at it in context, students typically only have four chances at spring break before they have to move on with their lives in the real world. And how often is it that a post-graduate career would allow you to take a week off four years in a row? The seven days we have at the beginning of March is clearly finite amount of time, and knowing this we want to wring every ounce of fun there is to be had out of spring break- even if it means a few hours every week to save up the money. So let it be known that at least when it comes to vacations, college kids have a strong sense of dedication.