As a fashion design major, the schedule of our finals happens to be much different than other majors at Syracuse University. As a design student, most of our final assessments are projects, which require weeks of work and cramming for our final presentations which usually happen the week before finals week.

For most sophomore design majors, the Wednesday before finals week happened to be the most anticipated day of our entire semester, as this was the day for most of our final design presentations.

My two-piece fashion project needed to be finalized and ready to present on Wednesday. Like the most, I had slept in an entire week was three hours during one of those nights, I am pretty sure I presented my collection with my eyes shut—although the presentation went just as I had anticipated and my collection looked exactly like my initial vision.

The next day, on Thursday, I was with my roommate at a new tea shop that we had not yet been to. As we often try to explore new cute locations within or around Syracuse, we immediately became obsessed with Roji Tea Lounge and entered a discussion while here about how we need to learn to separate from studies and travel more often. It was not long at all before this conversation transferred to us purchasing bus tickets for New York City that would depart for NYC the following day at midnight. As my roommate is also a design major, both of us understood that our stress levels from finals week were a little insane, and needed a mini vacation more than ever.

As I had not slept for such a long time at this point, my body could just about fall asleep at any time. Due to this, I took a nap the next day at 8 p.m., woke up at 10 p.m., and got ready for our bus trip to New York City.

The bus arrived in the city at 5 a.m., and all my roommate and friend could do with our sleep deprivation was a laugh. With nearly everything closed at this hour, we eventually wandered into a Tick Tock, a 24-hour diner in Times Square, and chatted over our extremely early breakfast for about an hour.

It felt so nice to get a break from everything. As all three of us were absolutely freezing, we stocked up on hand warmers, feet warmers, and extra socks, and headed towards the High Line to walk around and watch what was left of the sunrise. I have been dying to go to the High Line forever, and as I was finally able to go for the sunrise, it was beautiful.

If you know me well, it's pretty easy to guess that this walk eventually turned to shop. As I do love my shopping habits, this did come to an end as well, as the tickets that we purchased for the Andy Warhol museum were for 12:00 p.m. As all three of us walked to the museum, we stopped in random coffee shops to cure our exhaustion, were full of laughter and were absolutely freezing, but happy as ever to be back in our favorite city.

As you could guess, the Andy Warhol Museum at The Whitney was amazing. Warhol was such an iconic artist, and being able to wander multiple floors to view his works were all astounding. The Whitney is also stunning, with balconies on the highest floors to walk onto and look over the city and waterfront.

We became even more exhausted very quickly—which none of us knew would be possible after our crazy past week at school. After finishing our day by grabbing food at Chelsea Market and purchasing some fabrics for my upcoming fashion design collection at Mood, we sacrificed our cute jeans and decided to sit on the steps of Port Authority an hour before our bus arrived. As we sat, we were able to reflect on how important these getaways are, especially when we have majors that are so, so physically demanding and time-consuming.

I was asleep for nearly the entire bus ride back to Syracuse, NY. Those four hours luckily go by very quick, especially since we plan to do another one of these day trips very soon. With a few finals still going on the following week, we only had one day to make this trip work, and it worked out absolutely perfectly.

So, if I could give one bit of advice, I would tell you to TRAVEL. Leave for a day and just explore, knowing that this experience will leave you even more inspired for when you go back into your workspace. I'll always remember these day trips and cannot wait for the next one.