Spring Break. As a young child, this was a fun week where you spent time playing with friends in the front yard, and running around with no sense of responsibility. As you grow older and gain more responsibilities in school and life, you yearn for that one week of freedom, that one week before a few months summer vacation where you get a glimpse of what your near future holds.

Growing up in a beach town, high school spring break nearly always consisted of days tanning on the sand, playing in the sand and surf. So if anyone understands the appeal to the beach during spring break, it's me. But now that I'm in college, I think it was time to do something new.

Every year, thousands of college students flock to the Florida beaches, cramming the shoreline for a week of sand, sun, and surf. Most of the time, the week is a drunken haze and they come back saying they had the best time ever. Did they really though?

I think that some of the best times I have ever had were time spent out in the wilderness. That's why this year, I've decided to, along with a few friends, camp out in the Georgia mountains for almost a week. The trees, the hiking, the stillness of life around you. As a college student, you don't get to enjoy the slow-paced life that often, and this is a chance to do it. There is nothing better than sitting under a star-filled sky, roasting hot dogs over a hot fire, all of your hard work of setting up camp and hiking to your destination paying off.

So I challenge you. I challenge you as college students to abandon the norm for our spring break rituals, to forgo the parties and drunken hazes on the beach. I challenge you to lose yourself in the joys of wilderness, to find adventure in the great wide somewhere, and to enjoy the gift that Mother Nature provided us. You never know, you could just have an amazing time.