Spring break is a collegiate phenomenon that has always puzzled me. After weeks of trying, tiring midterms, the last thing I want is to be surrounded by messes of annoying, intoxicated people underneath a baking, boiling sun.

This spring break will provide me with the unique opportunity to avoid these aforementioned pet peeves while still inhabiting a magical, deserted-island environment. Due to conflicts with break and an academic commitment, I won’t be traveling to any sort of faraway paradise.

While a good number of University students will spend next week exposing themselves to dangerous levels of ultraviolet rays probably forgetting to lather on their SPF 50 and drinking God-knows-what from probably unclean coconut shells. I’m going to spend spring break 2k15 in the most tropical of paradises: the deserted island of Champaign-Urbana.

And with this column, I’m here to tell you that the midwest, non-tropical grass can be just as green with the proper, satirical mind-set.

1. Leisurely accommodations

For those of you who follow my column with any amount of regularity, I wrote a few weeks back about the very pesky chihuahua who lives on the floor below me. For those who don’t follow my column (though I don’t know why on earth you wouldn’t!), I’ll say briefly that this aforementioned canine has a nasty little habit of barking and squealing at a high decibel at all hours of the night. Although I can’t say for sure, there’s a good chance that he and his equally pesky owners will be gone from my life for a week. The additional (and currently, severely lacking) sleep that will be had as a result of this will be a party in itself.

2. Quality cuisine

There’s been countless posts and Buzzfeed articles expressing outrage and unfortunate sympathy at the ceaselessly long and painful lines at Chipotle. I don’t know if it’s occurred to anybody yet, but with a large chunk of campus’s population gone for the week, the line at the campus Chipotle will be empty. Nonexistent. Nothing. That’s right — it’s going to be dinner rush hour on a Friday night, and I’ll be served a savory, coveted burrito with an amount of haste that rivals the Jimmy John’s “Freaky Fast” delivery promise. I know you must be jealous.

3. The long winter months have made me too pasty for neon

If you Google “Spring Breakers,” or something along that vein, you’ll see an assortment of young people sporting neon everything — and I mean everything. Whether it be an ill-fitted visor, muscle tee or fanny pack (yes, a fanny pack), it’s most likely going to be neon. Neon symbolizes the vitality of youth, and the “YOLO” culture today’s youth advocates for and embraces. That’s great, but I’m an arbitrary mixture of various European heritages, all of which, for some reason, are almost incapable of making a tan possible. Here on the desert island of C-U, I don’t have to follow the trend and neon it up. I can be posh and pale in my sweatpants. YOLO.

4. Health perks

While we’re on the melanin subject: It’s great to get a tan, but skin damage and overexposure to UV rays are certainly not qualifying traits of a rager in my book! As I sit in my eight-by-ten prison cell of an apartment bedroom reading Flaubert and receiving no exposure to the sun, my skin will maintain its porcelain, skim-milk-esquely pale hue. By medieval Europe, anybody-with-a-tan-who-works-under-the-sun-and-must-be-low-class standards, I’m a coveted asset.

5. Time to recharge my energies for the second half of the Spring 2015 semester

While I’m in not-Cancun, not partying myself into oblivion and not breaking my bank account, I’ll be preparing for the remainder of the semester and making plans to better budget my time in order to assure you, dear reader, that I have the time and means to write more snarky columns such as this one. Truly, this noble cause is worth the sacrifice of sunburn and increased risk of self-induced memory loss.

So, fellow Champaign/midwest-stranded students, fret not that you’re missing out on a week rife with YOLO-esque debauchery; clearly, there is alternate (read: far superior!) fun to be had, right here on the deserted University campus.

Carly is a junior in FAA.

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