Vacation is everyone's favorite thing to do. Planning one however, is hell.
Planning a vacation is easier said than done. You pick a place, a time to go, and you think you have it all figured out. Wrong. In reality you've just begun a long and invigorating process that will leave you in frustration. To give you an idea of how the struggle goes down, here's how my roommate and I have been trying to plan our spring break vacation:
Months ago, we decided we wanted to do something. First we wanted to go to Puerto Rico. Then we switched to Dominican Republic. And next came the Caribbean. But then we realized she didn't have a passport and those ideas would never work. So we started to look at cruise lines that you didn't need a passport for. We FaceTimed for hours looking at different ships and trips until we finally found one we could afford that had a lot to offer. Everything was perfect. But then we discovered you had be 21 to book a room and our hearts sank. Turns out being 18 means literally nothing. So much for "legal adult."
After that we settled on going to Florida. But of course we didn't know where in Florida we even wanted to go. We spent hours looking at flights and resorts only to realize we couldn't afford any of what we had found, which led us to looking at discount sites. And every time we found something affordable we would question if it was reliable or not.
And then somewhere along the line we got distracted and started talking about relationships, boys, friends, you know the deal. We're at a complicated time in our lives and at this point we've encountered so much conflict and drama, we have yet to find a way to live in peace. This went on for awhile until we realized we'd gotten distracted, and still had no idea what we wanted to do for spring break. At this point it was around one o'clock in the morning.
So we went back to researching out options and came up with three solid ideas: Miami, Disney, or Key West. And then we decided that was good enough and called it a night.
Both of us said we'd look at pricing and such the following week but of course neither of us did so when we FaceTimed again a week later we still had nothing done. Productive individuals, I know. Disney was the first thing we decided on and we actually did pick our a resort and package. But she found out she wouldn't have enough money by then so we had to toss the idea all together.
Miami beach was next on the list. But the thousands of google suggestions for hotels and resorts was overwhelming and we weren't sure which ones were legit and which ones were scams. And then somewhere in the mix of looking at different websites, we ended up back on our conversations about the people in our lives and what we'd been up to. We also discussed everything about second semester from our goals and plans to what we wanted to avoid.
1am rolled around again and we gave up. It's been a few days since then and we keep telling each other "we gotta plan this or it's not gonna happen." And at this point we still have nothing planned. And so we'll go about the next few weeks doing the same thing and before we know it spring break will be here and we'll have nothing to do. Maybe we'll have something booked by the end of the month, and maybe we won't. But at least we tried right?
So as you can see, planning a vacation isn't as easy as it sounds. The idea of it is nice, but you never really consider the costs, the reliabilities, the timing, or the procrastination of actually picking these things out. Especially when you're a broke college student relying on your savings and going against parents will.
