Alternative Spring Breaks are Lame!

Over the last few weeks, whenever I have approached the Foggy Bottom Metro here in DC, I've beden confronted with the chants, yells, and exclamations of overzealous, chirpy alternative spring breakers hitting up decent, hard working folk for money. "Alternative," meaning they are not going to be sucking jello shots off each others navels in Cancun. Instead, they'll be piously building homes for the less fortunate, cleaning up dirty parks, administering first aid, or teaching dirty little kids how to read...you get the picture. Because they have so generously decided to throw away their spring breaks and devote themselves to doing volunteer work they believe we should support their trip, because....damned if they'll spend any money on it.

Alternative spring breaks are a load of croc, they have no economic logic. If your goal is to make the world the best place it could possibly be, in the most efficient manner, you would never go on an alternative spring break. Just spending money on air fare to travel across the nation or to another country negates any benefit of your trip. Instead, you could do civic work locally, where there is no shortage of its need. In an case, it's alright to have a vacation guys and gals. People owe it to themselves to relax, unwind, and reflect. Further, I suspect, most alternative spring breaks aren't spent doing sanctimous civic construction 100% of the time. These trips are group activites, and friends probably spend their nights drinking or sight seeing. It's pretty lame to try and make yourself feel fulfilled by spending a quarter of your vacation inefficiently building a house at public sector pace, but it's even lamer to have used other people's money to do so.

Look, there are people who need help, and we should help them. But, even if this was 2005, going hundreds of miles to help rebuild homes after Hurricane Katrina for just a week is not worth it. If you want to be efficient, you have to totally dedicate yourself to that cause. You're not a carpenter or a construction worker. Building houses is not easy, it takes skilled labor. Going to New Orleans for a few days and doing some grunt work which someone else much closer to the area could do, maybe for a little money, makes no sense. You could instead become a part of, in whichever way is the most efficient, the overarching effort to rebuild New Orleans. Something like this would require taking a semester off from school, but invaluable experience would be gained, and it would be even better (and more efficient) if it somehow related to your educational and career goals.

Long story short, enjoy your one week reprieve from reading, quizzes, tests, and social drama. Don't feel like you're helping the world by putting up some vinyl siding, you're not. Be efficient, enjoy life, recharge.