You're sitting on the beach with the perfect piña colada in your hand. The sun is beating down on you, and you can feel your tanning oil seeping into your skin. The waves are loudly crashing in front of you and as you close your eyes, you begin to contemplate how you reached this sudden Nirvana. All your friends are surrounding you and whether you're on a coastal beach lying in the sand or partying it up in PV, all you can think of is how you never want this time to end.
As the days get shorter and shorter, within a blink of an eye, you soon find yourself taking off back to your homeland, gazing outside the plane window and assuming that your life is now over. For many of us, spring break was a time we "peaked," a time where everything else in our lives appeared to be going downhill. That is OK. You see, spring break is helpful for two reasons:
1. It forces us girls to lay off the carbs and late night "drunchies," knowing that we have to fit into last year's swimsuits... easier said than done.
2. It provides us with the best motivation to get through the last grueling six weeks of school.
As we step off the plane and want to slam our heads into the wall because we're forced to face reality again, we must keep one thing in mind: Post-Spring Break Depression is a thing, but we can all get through it. While we can reminisce on our best selves that were depicted throughout our week-long extravaganza, we must deal with the pain and sadness of our unfortunate reality that our lives aren't a constant party.
Even though the first Monday morning back might feel like hell with our immense workload and awful weeks of tests (like do teachers not take spring break into consideration or....), we must deal with this depression in a series of helpful ways:
1. Don't binge eat and think that just because spring break is over that you're never going to have to get in a bathing suit again. False! Summer is right around the corner. Instead, this is a great time to keep up the healthy eating and tedious exercise regimen you've been practicing for the past month.
2. Don't let your dreamy hookup buddy on your vacation get out of reach. Stay in touch with the new friends and hot boys you met on your trip. That's what these kind of trips are for (besides the unlimited poolside bar service).
3. Stay focused. Power through your school work and study your butt off so you can feel accomplished when you lay back down on the beach in six weeks. Nothing is going to pay off more than knowing you deserve some rest and relaxation.
4. Make the most of your time left at school. For seniors, you're on the last stretch. Graduation is around the corner and this is your time to shine and get in all the last memories and regrets that you can before you embark into the real world. For freshmen, it's your last opportunity to make all the stupid mistakes you can until you have to grow up and become a "sophisticated" sophomore. Sophomores and juniors, keep peaking. Make the most of it. Go out whenever you can, meet as many new people as you can, and have a good time with your bffs.
Don't turn into a depressed college student binge-watching Netflix and eating as many Girl Scout cookies as you can. Get your life together! We're all going through this "depression" together and we can cope with it in the best ways possible.
Just remember, 365 days until you're on your favorite beach yet again.
