Spring Break

Today’s the first day of Spring Break. I was reminded of this this morning when I went to post next week’s schedules in my two online classes and found there were no schedules to post because we have next week off. Spring Break has no meaning for me anymore. When I was teaching full-time and on campus I would always use the week to get away, for a fishing trip in Arkansas, a visit to Berlin and Prague, or just a long weekend in Chicago or New York or San Francisco. “Break” meant a physical break, an escape, getting away. But now that I’m retired (or semi-retired to the internet) there’s nothing to get away from. Or rather, I can now get away whenever I want. We went to Chicago last month. Next month we’re going to Italy. We are going to Chicago next weekend, though not because it’s Spring Break for me but because it’s Spring Break for my sister, who still teaches full-time and is coming to Chicago for her get-away this year.

Odd perhaps, but for me Spring Break wasn’t much of a vacation for me as a student. I never went to – or particularly wanted to go to (or for that matter could ever afford to go to) –Padre Island, South Beach, or Cancun. As an undergraduate, I would usually just drive home for the week, perhaps catching up on some backed-up schoolwork, more likely just lounging around watching TV or going to movie matinees. As a graduate student, the week was a hard study week, spent mostly in the library (this was before computers and the internet), catching up on reading, preparing for papers and tests that were to come.

It was only when I became faculty that I could afford – both financially and demands of work – to get away for Spring Break. And for all of the 22 years that I taught full-time, I can’t recall one when I didn’t use the time to travel, even if only for a long weekend a day’s drive away. But that was then. I don’t need the break now. Indeed, it comes – as it did today – as something of a surprise. And I plan to spend the week just going about my days as I’ve been going about my days the past two years – reading, walking, writing. Maybe I can get into the garden. Or out on a trout stream. Or maybe take a bike ride. But I don’t need an official break to do any of those things most any week. In that sense, every week is Spring Break for me now.