1. “I need to get in shape”
If I’m going to be completely honest with myself, this is going to be difficult as I have legitimately written in my planner to attend an all-you-can-eat barbeque festival called Porkapolooza. Regardless, I know I’m going to have to dedicate myself heavily to vegetables for the next few weeks. This has dual purpose: first, bathing suits don’t have a lot of fabric and second, vegetables have been sorely lacking from my everyday diet after I gave up on my New Year’s resolution to eat healthily about a week into January.
2. “This isn’t even a break”
Two midterms due before we leave, three midterms due after — U.Va. is seriously cramping my party of one Netflix and chill plans. Instead of complaining to unsympathetic roommates about how much I don’t want to do my work, I get to complain to my unsympathetic family. There is no winner in any of these situations. I would love to meet the inventor of midterms, who is causing suffering to way more people than necessary, some of whom (my family) shouldn’t have even been involved in the first place. Midterms: a classic case of bad things happening to good(ish) people.
3. “Mom, stop”
If you’re like most college students, two of three things have already occurred: your mother has texted you upwards of 13 times telling you to remember your sunscreen and to be safe in whatever tropical locale you may be visiting, she’s scheduled dentist appointments for you at nine in the morning the first day you come home because “it was the only time Dr. Stop-with-the-power-tools was available” or she has inquired way too deeply about the status of your summer or life plans. For health’s sake, do remember to put on sunscreen and attend the dentist appointment, but don’t feel obligated to do it with a smile on your face. Save those smiles for the multitude of job or internship interviews you should supposedly have lined up.
4. “How can it be Spring Break already?”
According to various sources in the real world, life post-college doesn’t have a Spring Break. How will I survive actually being productive eight hours a day, five days a week? I can barely be productive for the nine credit hours/three class days I am currently shouldering (if any future employers are reading this, I’m kidding). Regardless, it felt like it was New Year’s Eve about three minutes ago. I’m halfway to a mid-life crisis considering this semester is halfway over, and I’m fully certain my sanity can only last for a few weeks longer. I get to go to beach week until I’m 30, right?
5. “I am extremely pale”
Once, I watched a CSI: Miami episode in which a girl got locked in a tanning bed and burned to death. That paired with the terrifying eye goggle things you have to wear and my hatred of the color orange mean I have never gotten a fake tan. While this isn’t really a unique thing, it is definitely a lifestyle choice I tend to think really hard about when my skin is one shade from see-through. It’s easy to wear a huge sweater and leggings and coat your face in tanning lotion, but like a fish out of water, a girl out of winter is not a pretty sight. I won’t go fake tanning, but it doesn’t mean I won’t complain about how pale I am.
6. “Do I own enough bathing suits?”
Full confession: I haven’t grown much since seventh grade, so I still wear many of the clothes I had back then. Most of those went way out of style in high school, but fashion does this fun thing where trends cycle back a few years later — see my “trendy” college wardrobe, brought to you by my middle school obsession with both athletic wear and “Seventeen” magazine. The good news is I have purchased new underwear since. The bad news is I haven’t purchased many new bathing suits. I always mean to, but when it comes down to it, I’d rather spend the money on brunch and a third fur vest because those are #timeless. At least I’ve had consistent tan lines!
7. “I’m so tired, I can’t even think right now”
This is a real thought, thought by me during the entirety of every day, including but not limited to the entire time I was writing this article. So, I took it upon myself to seek help from two of my friends to get a behind the scenes look at what was going on in the heads of people debatably saner than me. Groupthink mentality is not always bad, right? Data collected included: “Zika. JK,” “Beach bod. Tanning,” (validation!) “bathing suits,” (more validation!) “MTV Spring Break” and “Good daiquiris. Free hibachi. Beaches.” From this, I learned three things: my friends are just as tired as me, it’s hard to copy and paste from a group text and it’s too soon to bring up Zika.
8. “What happens if I don’t check my email for all of break?”
Email fomo, the plague of the 21st century. When I was in high school, the “it” phone to have was a Blackberry — a phone legitimately designed for businesspeople and email. I, instead, used it solely for the tiny snake game and BBM: the antithesis of anything productive and a complete waste of money. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those simpler days when I didn’t check my email every five minutes for all hours of the day. This includes checking my email in the middle of Trinity on a Friday night and occasionally actually responding to an email in the middle of Trinity on a Friday night. Do not — I repeat, do not — pick this habit up from me.
9. “How did I eat so much in high school and not gain any weight?”
Whenever I go home for break, I get this overwhelming feeling I need to eat at all the places around my hometown I can’t go to when I’m at school. As I try to cram three different kinds of sandwiches, ice cream from two different stores and four plates of various stuffed French toast into my mouth, I always long for the days when I did this on a regular basis and my metabolism could handle it. Now, I consume the same alarming amount of food at the same alarmingly quick speed but manage to gain about 10 pounds in the process. Do juice cleanses work?
10. “When can I go back to school?”
Admit it: as much as you hate midterms and work and chapter and how long it takes to walk to Newcomb and rain and loud pre-games next to your apartment and dining hall food and waking up with Littlejohn’s in your bed, you love it here. We all certainly need a break — and I can only imagine how much our professors need one as well — but we’ll be back here in no time, continuing to complain about everything and reading about one third of what we’re supposed to. Enjoy your week of freedom, or if you’re like me, a week and a half because I don’t have classes on Thursday or Friday or until 4 p.m. on Monday. Oops.
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