Spring break: also known as a time when college students have a week of complete and utter freedom. The weather’s nice, and everyone takes a crazy cross country road trip or goes to Mexico with all of their best friends.

But let’s take a step back from this wild spring break ideal and look at the reality of the situation. College kids are broke—that’s basically a fact of life. My question is, where are all of these college students who go out of the country for spring break getting this money? And how can I get a job like this?

Also, for these wild students who don’t go home for spring break, what about your family? I know my mom would be extremely disappointed if she didn’t get to see me over spring break after being gone for several months before this and being gone for several months after the break. Plus, let’s be real, I’d miss my family, too, as I’m sure a lot of people would but may not want to admit.

One of the worst parts of spring break is seeing all the movies that create super high expectations of what spring break will be like in college. In high school, I’d watch movies and TV shows and see all the crazy fun adventures that would go on during spring break. I’d think, “Wow, I can’t wait until I’m in college and can go on trips like these with all my best friends!” But here I am, in college, still going nowhere for spring break.

The thing about spring break in college that I didn’t expect is that even without going on vacation, you still have the opportunity to go home. And when you’ve been gone for weeks or even months, going home actually kind of feels like a vacation. Everyone’s excited to see you, you get a break from your day to day life, and there’s no school or (hopefully) homework to work on.

Also, let’s look at spring break in the grand scheme of life. There are four spring breaks of your life, which means four weeks out of 208 weeks. This leaves 204 other weeks of your entire college career to make memories and have crazy adventures with your besties. So don’t stress out about spending thousands of dollars on a few weeks of your life when you could make amazing memories without putting so much effort into one week.

These 204 weeks left of college not including spring break also don’t include the rest of the weeks of your entire life that you can make amazing memories with your college friends. There are literally thousands of other opportunities to travel and have crazy spring break memories without the pressure of actually doing it over spring break.

So, if you’re not going anywhere but home for spring break, don’t feel lame. You’ll be the student who has more money, more energy and a more hopeful outlook for traveling in the future when everyone comes back.