What Is Spring Break?

How Swimmers & A Sexy Movie Gave us Our "Bucket List"

I have never once questioned Spring Break. I blindly accepted it. The same way you accept that you must turn off your phone’s cell service when taking off and landing in an airplane, but using WiFi during those same times is totally fine. I’m sure there’s a bigger reason why that’s ok. Please DON’T explain it to me in the comments; I like to lead a life that still has some mystery to it,

This year, for reasons I cannot fully explain, maybe because I’m not on Spring Break, I stopped and Googled, What is Spring Break?

Here is what I found out: Spring Break as we know it was essentially invented in 1960 by a beach movie. But hold that thought because first we have to go back to 1935 when a swim coach from Colgate University brought his team to Fort Lauderdale to train in a warm-water pool. Other colleges noticed. Within a few years, Fort Lauderdale had quietly become a destination for college swimmers during the gap between winter and spring semesters, a two-week break most colleges had built into the calendar specifically to prevent student burnout.

So for like 25 years, it was just hairless swimmers in Speedos, reeking of chlorine, getting a tan in Fort Lauderdale. Not technically a party, more of a convention of people who are perpetually damp.

Then came Where the Boys Are (1960).

A film about four college girls who road tripped to Fort Lauderdale for a break and wanted to get laid. Yes, laid. Kinda. Where the Boys Are was one of the first teen films to explore adolescent sexuality and the changing sexual morals and attitudes among American college youth. So as you might expect, the movie was a massive hit.

I had never heard of it either, don’t feel bad. But it was kinda like the original Fast Times at Ridgemont High, since Where the Boys are was also adapted from a book, called UNHOLY SPRING, written by Glendon Swarthout, an English professor who tagged along with his students to witness their spring break, where he saw hookups, beach cruising, and beer-chugging.

Everyone saw Where the Boys Are, and it made Spring Break look like the most important week of your life, a rite of passage to shed the Winter You and grow into the Summer You Want to Become.

And people wanted to live what they saw and headed down to Florida for this two-week break and partied and Fort Lauderdale leaned in. Hotels leaned in. Airlines leaned in. The year after the film, tourism jumped from 20K to 50K visitors during this two-week break. Local Breweries like the Elbo Room even held Beer Chugging Competitions to match the attitude of their new clientele.

By the ‘80s, MTV took this rite of passage and made it look cooler (and full of way more attractive people than it ever actually was), But most notably they also moved North because after 25 years of debauchery, Fort Lauderdale proactively enacted policies in the mid-1980s to curb the massive crowds, rowdy behavior, and alcohol consumption that dominated the area.

I’m in awe of how we invented a two-week party holiday because a bunch of kids saw a movie. I guess this is similar to what happened with seniors after they saw Bucket List with Jack Nicholson - did you know that wasn’t a term until that movie was released. Look it up.

So why is Spring Break a thing? I think it’s because humans existentially need a break. From the year. From weather. From work. From ourselves. From the news. We need a window where we can just STOP. Be somewhere else. Forget, briefly, who we are. Wear bad swim wear, get dressed nice to go to a place that looks terrible in the daylight, make TikToks we’ll regret, and drink alcohol out of a plastic bucket, and for all of that to be completely normal and unremarkable.

This year, I have no spring break plans and maybe that’s why I started this journey in the first place and Im realizing I might subconciously need it. We all do. But we can’t always take one. So I’m advocating no matter where you are in your life right now, take a moment, if you’re lucky, a day; if you’re really lucky, a week, and just do something to shut out the noise.

Take a break from yourself.

That might be the best vacation you can ever take.*

(Also Movies rule)

*I thought this was going to be more of joke essay then it became this.