As Spartans, we travel well. But where to begin? If you're planning to hop on a plane during your time as a college student, you'd better know where you're going, how you want to get there and how you're going to pay for it.
Planning your spring break
You might not think about it often, but spring break is an absolutely crucial time in your school year. Getting pounded with exam after exam and paper after paper can really take its toll on your psyche, and if you don't get the proper amount of rest and relaxation, the unrelenting pressure of college could also make a dent in your grade point average.
Enter your spring break romp. There's nothing like a week of mindless adventure to really clear your head.
However, it doesn't take too much carelessness or inexperience for that looming trip to change from something to smile about to just another piece of coal added to your stress furnace.
You don't want to be stressed about a vacation. Tamara Olton, an adviser from STA Travel, named a few trends, gave a little advice and spoke about a number of options available for a successful spring break.
"We do a lot of different packages," Olton said about STA's options. "If you want, you can do all-inclusive, which would include all your food, your airport transfers and your alcohol, which can be expensive, so it's nice to get it all done. We also offer hotels that give you your own food options if you don't want to pay up. We have packages for clubs and parties where you go to a specific club every night and get ahead of the line, with free drinks and things like that."
Olton said STA offers several packages that can help students who are unable to spend as much money on a trip.
Being timely is everything, and a good planner plans early. Olton made this clear when she described a time schedule for getting to that sunny destination.
"Students should start asking questions … in August, when school starts," she said. "And they should definitely be looking to book by the end of September, beginning of October. No later than that. If they start asking early, they can kind of figure out the prices, how much they need to give up and which destinations sound the best to them."
An alternative
If a week of general debauchery seems a little shallow and uninteresting to you, you might want to try something different. Believe it or not, there is a spring break for you.
MSU's Alternative Spring Break is another option.
Instead of murdering your brain cells every night, you could be planting, painting, cleaning or rebuilding impoverished or devastated areas.
No, you don't have to be a huge activist or local missionary to do something like this. MSU's own Center for Service-Learning Civic Engagement has its own program for alternative spring breaks, and there are a lot of options.
You can do anything from volunteer at orphanages in Mexico, assist the homeless at Staten Island, maintain trails in Puerto Rico or help with various projects on an Indian reservation in South Dakota.
The options are varied, the moral payoff is more rewarding and the program looks great on a résumé. For more information on Alternative Spring Break, visit http://asb.msu.edu.
The thing you have to do at MSU
Study abroad. Understand what you did when you enrolled at MSU. You chose the public school with the largest and most nationally recognized program in the entire nation for taking classes overseas. Going to MSU and not going abroad is like going to the gym and not working out, going to a high school dance and not dancing or going on "The Price Is Right" and winning the kitchen showcase. Okay, bad examples, but you get the idea. It would be a shame for you to miss the opportunity.
Inge Steglitz, assistant director of the Office of Study Abroad at MSU, talked about why you should definitely go abroad.
"There are lots of benefits," she said. "There are academic and intellectual benefits in terms of gaining a new perspective on your major, as well as comparative and critical-thinking skills. Then you obviously have this personal growth, becoming more self-reliant and independent, something the students consistently tell us happens on study abroad."
Steglitz said the experience might even help you get a job once you graduate.
"We had an interesting study by an employment company who is nationally known for research on collegiate employment that indicates employers value international experience. They tend to be more resourceful, adaptable, able to deal with change and able to interact with people from a variety of different backgrounds."
Steglitz also talked about the number of programs and options for studying abroad.
"We currently have some 220 programs that we run ourselves and then others that we run through other schools, so the possibilities are endless. We are over 60 countries right now, spanning all continents.
"It's the time in your life to do it, and I have yet to meet a student who will tell me it was a mistake. Personally, I think it's the best thing that a student can do for his or her self during their college career."
