Seven weeks of madness, coming to a close.
After a hectic first half of the spring semester, students are just about ready to take a much needed break. The work hard, play hard nature of Lehigh doesn’t leave much time for anything else.
The thousands of legitimate options for spring break plans include: traveling with friends, spending time with family, partying at a resort, studying abroad, catching up on school work or even just focusing on sleep.
A break can be fast or slow, relaxing or jam-packed, but in the end it is about making time to do the things you want to do. With only one sizable recess from the stressful environment of a college campus, there is no time to disregard our own agenda.
As students at a prestigious university, we don’t often have the time to focus on ourselves. Self-motivation is thrown to the wayside and replaced with a task-oriented approach that facilitates our ability to keep up with our responsibilities.
And when we finally get a chance to take a week off, too many times we act on expectations of what we “should” be doing.
Individuals are coerced by their friends to take a trip they don’t want to go on. Students with rigorous workloads feel compelled to take advantage of extra study time when they just want a break. Homesick freshmen visit their friends at other colleges instead of returning to their families.
To prevent this mistake, it is necessary to block out all of the noise and make your own choice.
Whether it constitutes as a productive break or not, spend it doing something you want to do. Each Lehigh student gets four spring breaks in their college career. If you don’t act now you might not get another chance soon.
Once we graduate and exit into a world that often forces us into a nine-to-five work schedule, it will sink in that our free time is limited. We might no longer be afforded the opportunity to take an entire week to do whatever we want.
But focusing on ourselves doesn’t imply that we don’t need to be critical of how we act.
If you’re going on to a stereotypical party destination, by all means relieve the stress that has built up at Lehigh but have some respect for the local community you are occupying.
If you’re going on a study abroad program, engage with the culture you are entering and take risks but be aware of its limits and question your impact.
Even if you’re just going home to relax in preparation for the rest of the semester, enjoy the down time but make sure to appreciate your family and friends that you are separated from during the school year.
If you stay mindful of your decisions, you will strike a balance between fulfilling both your goals and your responsibility to stay grounded. Be sure to keep that on your radar.
Make it count. When you get back it’ll be another seven weeks of madness before finals.
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