The clocks have been set back an hour, sunset begins after 6 p.m. and warmer days are sprinkled in with rain and wind. In short, spring has arrived in Hanover. With the new season, our two-week break came and went, briefly relieving students of their classes and stress. While some Dartmouth students boarded planes to international destinations like the Caribbean or Europe, others chose to spend break at home or on campus. Having no set vacation plans, I traveled back home to the South Side of Chicago this spring break.
Spending two weeks at home is easier said than done. For one, I spent the first three days of my break finishing final assignments; in a blur of Red Bulls, naps and lock-in sessions, I managed to submit everything before the end of the finals period. With the omnipresence of academic stress temporarily alleviated, the days began to blur together due to a lack of things to do. Chicago can be very fun in the summertime with its copious public beaches, outdoor markets, festivals and a city that just seems to be alive with joy. However, Chicago in mid-to-late March is quieter. The weather is slightly warmer, but the spring storms batter the city for weeks on end. No beach, no sun and no friends quickly turn spring break in the city into its own deserted paradise.
I shut down for the rest of the week, spending most of my time breaking up my waking hours with much-needed naps. I caught up on T.V. Shows like Dexter and Psych supplemented my daydreams of a vacation in a hot climate or my living my own crime sitcom; anything sounded better than the reality of wasting away in bed.
At the same time, social media screen time makes it harder to relax. It was hard to avoid FOMO at not frolicking on a beach in Cancun or being able to update my Instagram profile. So many pictures flooded my feed with friend groups in Puerto Rico, Cancun, London, and other destinations. Close friends of mine looked like they were having the time of their lives on their Insta stories; meanwhile, I had not left the house in over two days. To have a good college experience here at Dartmouth, it feels like taking a tropical spring break vacation with a huge group of friends is a quintessential rite of passage.
Once the peak relaxation period of break fades, restlessness sets in. Winterim brought the joy of coming home to family, going shopping with friends or eating at my favorite Mexican spot in Chicago. The longer break of winter was also perfect for getting back to the basics of life with simple responsibilities like my part-time job as a cashier at a department store. Summer break offers the opposite, as I spend my days lounging in sunny weather or trying to turn my internship into a future job offer. Summer acts as a preview for post-grad life. In comparison, spring break is a weird limbo when I don’t have time to do much of anything. It can be a mediocre two weeks for anyone not taking an actual vacation.
Spending time with friends is mainly what I look forward to when returning home for break. We drive around aimlessly, eat at random neighborhood restaurants, window shop in Wicker Park, and sit in empty parking lots along the lakefront. When I wake from my days-long stupor at home feeling recharged, I’m most excited by the idea of running around my hometown with my friends for days on end.
However, another source of the spring break blues is that my break doesn’t align with my friends from home, making it harder to spend time together. Most of the people I graduated with attend our state school, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which is about a two-hour drive from home.
Even on the rare occasion that my break schedule does align with a friend, that high school friendship becomes harder to maintain with every term that passes. Finally seeing those hometown friends and catching up only makes the differences between our lives starker. I can’t help but feel isolated as one of the few who ventured out of the Midwest. I leave almost every hangout with a confused mixture of feelings, often nostalgic for life before college and sometimes sad that I am no longer in the loop. These conversations serve as reminders of how much my life has changed. Even home feels different now.
Because of all these challenges, spring break becomes an individualized experience. For me, the break was both a time of relief and reflection. These breaks are some of my last opportunities to spend 14 days entirely as I choose. As I enter the second half of my college career and begin to consider what post-grad life will look like, it becomes clear that I must appreciate these moments even more. After all, I only get one time in life to be 19 and devoid of responsibilities. With the ups and downs of spring break behind me, I look forward to the many promises campus will offer me this spring. See you soon, Dartmouth.
