Easter break yields mixed feelings

As the stereotypical “poor college student’, I decided to stay on campus over the past break.

I had noticed a sign on the front of Kent Hall saying they were going to turn off the power at 12:30 a.m. on Saturday, so I had made the proper preparations to make sure that my food wouldn’t spoil or my ice cream wouldn’t melt.

I was set to wake up around noon to put my things somewhere else. However, to my dismay, they shut the power off earlier than scheduled, so my food ended up going bad anyways. In addition, a majority of people I talked to didn’t even know that they were going to be shutting off the power. All they put up was one sign. No more, no less.

Not only that, but the wireless modems went haywire, giving users full bars, yet dial-up speeds, and the second floor was out of internet the entire day. I knew how to fix the problem, as I had done it with other wireless routers in the past, but to my dismay, there was no way to access the power cable.

As I walked to the front desk to warn someone of the problem, I saw that there was no one there. So I did the logical thing and sent a text to my RA, asking where to inquire about the broken internet.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I had his number wrong. What better way to spend it than sitting in my dorm room, with all my food spoiled, and my internet malfunctioning? Sounds like a pretty good way to spend a break, right?

Well, aside from the troubles at the beginning, it actually wasn’t bad. It was quieter; I didn’t have to listen to my neighbors blare dubstep and country all day and all night, so that was a major plus.

I had gotten my homework done, read the required chapters for my FYI class, and even managed to clean my room a little bit.

After that, there was nothing else; I couldn’t go waste all of my money on random things, especially when I only have less than five cents in my bank account. So I did what any other exhausted student would do, I slept. That is, until my friends decided to barge in.

Surprisingly they all decided to say behind for vacation also. We all agreed that just because we had one extra day to laze about didn’t mean that we had to embark on an eight hour journey across the state over the weekend; that would have been a waste of gas. And so, we stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, playing video games and eating every junk food known to man.

I could actually turn up my stereo, and no one would tell me to turn it down, which was nice considering I had a huge stack of vinyl records that I had been looking to get through.

The only real pain was the fact that all the food places were closed. As a bigger man, I do enjoy my fair share of cafeteria food. Combined with the fact that some of my food had gotten ruined in the power outage, I was surviving on crackers and water.

Luckily, I scraped some extra cash together and was able to go get some good stuff at the grocery store. Aside from all that jazz, I would say that staying over break on campus was a pretty good experience, and I highly recommend it to those who are seeking some sort of peace and quiet.