It’s spring break time at a couple of local colleges, which got me thinking about the much mytholigized “college spring break”. You know, the one where you go to South Padre/Arizona/Cancun on your colleges’ spring break to have nonstop drinking and hook up constantly. I was too much the poor college student to afford this, and the people who did go to Arizona didn’t seem to have experiences much different than what they did back on campus. Did you do spring break in your college years? Did it live up to what you thought it should be? Got any good stories?
Nope. Too poor. Maybe I would go backpacking but that was it for wildness.
Nope. Couldn’t afford it. Besides, If I wanted to misbehave I could do it just as easily without leaving town. I still wish I could have had the money to travel to a beach and party, back when I was younger and had fewer responsibilities.
I did it once, in my very last year, but unfortunately the city I went to was experiencing some insane weather fluctuations, and it all went to shit.
Still, I had a good time.
Never had the stereotypical Spring Break experience. Never really wanted it either.
Closest I got was a road trip to go canoeing in the Everglades. It was a good time, but there were no women there, only mosquitoes. Otherwise, I usually had to work through spring break.
Sadly enough, no I didn’t. However, I feel like I made up for it by doing the Rosarito Ensenada bike ride about a dozen times after college. My greatest accomplishment was to come in last place one year, after having gotten arrested (for an open container, no less?!?), shown the jail, and then let go after a $30 bribe. Also, I went to Cabo a couple of times after college during spring break.
Never had it or wanted it. By that age, my idea of an extra-fun time was to sit down with a collection of unread books.
Kind of, once. I went to Lake Havasu in Arizona with a couple of friends and very little money. Got drunk off other people’s beer, did stupid shit like doing flips off of houseboats into the water, and met a whole bunch of people about my age who were mostly wearing swimwear and sunburns. Didn’t get laid, but didn’t get injured or arrested either. That was about the only time I had anything like a spring break experience, and I wasn’t actually a full-time college student at the time.
Nope. It just wasn’t in the culture where and when I was in college. If people did anything “special,” they might go to their family’s cabin in Wisconsin or Minnesota for some fishing, or just to be at the lake doing nothing. Jetting off to Florida or Arizona to make a drunken ass of themselves just wasn’t happening.
I grew up very near Panama City Beach, FL, and we used to drive down and get a little wild at spring break time (which, if you’re in the area, lasts a little over a month).
Now that I’m nearly 40 and I live in Panama City, I do all I can to avoid them. Every year I say, “Can you believe another one of those damn fools fell off a balcony?”
I studied at to a “cow college” in Wisconsin. At Spring Break a dozen busses would load up with kids bound for Florida; and one bus with art, theater and gay kids (probably a venn diagram there) went to NYC.
I walked my feet off at the Metropolitan, Museum of Modern Art, etc, and wandered out of SoHo all the way into Alphabet City (no galleries there, just pre-Giuliani blight; but, conditioned to see everything as an art exhibit, I found it interesting nonetheless)
I lived in Panama City for three years. I was stationed at Tyndall AFB. I got all the spring break I cared to have for about 6 weeks out of the year - which was perfect for an 18 year old kid. My work schedule was 2:30PM - 10:30PM. Every night, I’d get off work, get changed, head to PCB and be at the bars/clubs by 11:00 - which is really when they got going. Closed them down at bartime (which is 4AM), get some breakfast, then go home and go to bed. Get up at about 1:30 PM and do it all over again.
So, yeah, I had lots of spring break experience - just not in college.
Studied at to a cow college? Not big on sentence structure there, I guess? 
Seriously, what’s a cow college? I got my BSME at UW-P.
One of the Mighty Men of Melcher!
nope. no money and no friends.
Melcher? Not me. Having started college after 4 years in the USAF, I lived in a rundown slum of a college house a few blocks from campus.
So, if you’re familiar with Melcher hall - are you a UWP alumn as well? When did you graduate?
I transferred “at to” Eau Claire in 1979: UWEC had started as a teachers college; Platteville for mining engineers: three males to one female at Platteville.
And the art & theater population of UW-Platteville could have fit into a Miata to get “at to” Spring Break in NYC. (no idea of the size of the gay student population at UW-P, but probably quite large out of necessity - see M/F ratio cited above)
“Cow college” has been in use since 1915 for schools in jerkwater towns. I first read it used in Saul Bellow’s Humbolt’s Gift, and it resonated.
Most spring breaks I worked, but my freshman year I went to Madison Wisconsin on Spring Break, to visit my best friend. We had a blast. Where I went to school was in a very rural location so all the Bookstores! Ice cream! Rent parties! 2am Taco Hell runs! Cheese in the shape of a cow! were just too much fun. If memory serves I bought “Kitchen” by Banana Yashimoto and a bowler hat.
BTW, I’m from NYC. It’s not exactly an adventure visiting your mom.
A lot has changed since 1979. UWP isn’t really a mining college at all anymore - which really makes the big “M” confusing. It’s primarily an engineering college now. And since they have also expanded their teaching, liberal arts, and nursing programs, the ratio is much closer to 1:1.
Can’t say I approve of the term jerkwater for Platteville or Eau Claire. We’ve derailed this thread quite enough, so I digress.