It is a truth universally acknowledged that friends are not always the best roommates, and as I am sure many of you discovered last week on Spring Break, sometimes friends are not the most hospitable traveling companions. It's a rather cruel Spring Break illusion -- you go on vacation to relax and escape the drama of everyday college living, but instead it follows you, lurking under the clear blue tropical waters like a shark waiting to attack.
Traveling with a small group of friends means you must spend every waking and sleeping moment together, drunk, sober and everything in between from the time your plane departs to when it returns home. You cannot ever leave the group because you have been lectured extensively not to go places alone and to be careful, and often only one person has the room key. (Befriending randoms on Spring Break has the potential to become creepy fast, too, especially when new Spring Break friends are over 40 and invite you to for a day of sailing on their yacht.) Through the ups and downs of travel you find that, displaced from your normal university environment, you and your traveling companions take on different personas.
On the way to the airport you quickly learn which of your friends qualifies as the high-maintenance traveler. But first I'd like to establish the fundamental difference between packing for preparedness and high-maintenance packing. Just because a person's suitcase may have been labeled "heavy" by airport standards two Spring Breaks in a row doesn't mean this person is high-maintenance. She was probably just packing for every possible outfit scenario, factoring in the unknown temperature variable of the beach climate and the prospect of rain. Bringing along 12 different sundresses when your trip is 8 days long isn't excessive -- it is thorough planning. A high-maintenance traveler packs at least three hair-styling tools that require power outlets, her entire shoe collection and the entirety of the Clinique skin care line on Spring Break -- and then complains about sand getting into every purse she brought.
It is assumed that any college Spring Breaker will have a drink or two during the course of the vacation. Therefore a waste-face traveler emerges from the group of your friends, intent on consuming every tropical drink in sight, maraschino cherry, mini umbrella and all. The waste-face traveler may still be drunk from Spring Break right now ... or at least is still sweating out the tequila. There are no parents, after all, and sometimes no drinking age, depending on which tropical locale you choose. And can you really blame a Spring Breaker for taking advantage of the only socially acceptable situation where you can sit in public all day pounding buckets of something made with 10 kinds of rum? With the physical and psychological effects of consecutive days spent drinking, things start to get ugly.
Speaking of ugly, the palest of your traveling companions quickly becomes the sunburned traveler after a day spent in the tropical sunshine. Besides ruining the sexiness of a killer tan, sunburn induces irritability and animosity in even the sweetest of travelers. The only remedy is to slather Aloe vera all over yourself, so no wonder you're pissed off -- you're covered in green slime, and wherever you're burned the worst you emanate heat like a radiator for the rest of the day.
After long nights of partying, it is easy to identify the traveler with an addiction. I'm not talking about narcotics or anything airport drug-sniffing dogs can detect from your suitcase. My friends are not that hard-core. Yet even a seemingly harmless caffeine addiction can change a silly Spring Break companion into a raging, coffee-craving monster whose eyes do not fully open until she's had a small cup of vile-looking hotel lobby coffee, which she drinks black like an intensely scary old person. Apparently soda is not an adequate substitute for coffee. The strange logic you learn from addicts.
As for me, I'm the overzealous traveler who whines about wasting valuable beach time after we've come home at 6 a.m. and then bounds out of bed four hours later wanting Patrón shots for breakfast. Maybe that's just the waste-face traveler in me. But who cares about finding the place to eat when you're losing valuable wave-jumping time trying to cater to each person's desires? Especially when there are mysteriously delicious meat and fried dough options conveniently sold beach front à la carte.
Don't get me wrong, I love to travel every chance I can, and I can't imagine anything more fun in college than exploring new places with your best friends. But I find it amusing that those you travel with can suddenly become the most evil and annoying people you've ever met after a long plane ride south. But you'll treasure every Spring Break memory, wonderful or frustrating, in years to come as you sip black coffee like an old person.
Mary's column runs biweekly Fridays. She can be reached at mbaroch@cavalierdaily.com.
Read More
Holding onto every grain in the hourglass
By Mai Hukuoka | 12 hours agoNow that I’m back at school, I have made it my mission to take note of the sneaky passage of time.
Students brave the cold for a whirlwind sorority rush
By Mia Tan | 2 days agoStudents recount a mix of emotions from rush, with some disappointed after dropping from the recruitment process and others ecstatic to join Greek life.
Top 10 ways to avoid burnout this semester
By Sam Saks | 3 days agoAs you settle into this semester, try implementing these 10 tactics to take care of yourself and wave goodbye to burnout.
