Why Some Penn State Students Aren’t Going Home for Spring Break

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — To go home, or not to go home, that is the question.

Many college students leave campus during spring break to go and spend time with family and friends back home while enjoying a week off from school. However, not all students do this.

While some Penn State students aren’t interested in going home or financially aren’t able to, other students spend the break traveling to other cities or states to vacation.

Sophomore Alex Brajovic lives in Chambersburg, PA, but is going to Virginia to visit her long-distance boyfriend for spring break. She said she doesn’t emotionally feel comfortable going home due to familial problems that arose over winter break.

“I’m just putting that off until the summer and I’m gonna go be happy with my boyfriend for a week,” she said.

Brajovic said she’s looking forward to using the break to catch up with her boyfriend and spend time together.

Another Pennsylvanian student, Brandon McCullough, said he’s not going home and is choosing to instead stay at his off-campus apartment for the break. McCullough plans on hanging out with his roommates and playing video games with his friends the entire week.

“The college kid dream,” he said, jokingly. “I’ve lived with my family for so long that it’s nice having the freedom of living on my own and doing what I want.”

Not all of the students staying in town for the break are necessarily doing so by choice, though.

Morgan Schnars, a junior, is from Florida and said that even if she didn’t have to work, flying home would be too expensive. Many students like her are not going home because the cost of travel just isn’t worth it.

Roman Parra Bravo, freshman, said he paid for the Break Access/Holiday Housing contract where students are allowed to stay in on-campus housing during the fall, winter, and spring breaks. His parents live in Guadalajara, Jalisco, in Mexico which makes the cost for a plane ticket somewhere over $1k.

“Paying that much just for one week is a little ridiculous,” Parra Bravo said.

Harshvardhan Singh is also paying the housing fee to stay on campus instead of traveling back home to India for the same reason.

“I’m going to go back in the summer so I’ll just see my parents then,” he said.

Both students said that their plans for the week are to catch up on school work and hang out with friends. Singh said he was supposed to go on a road trip with friends, but after the plans fell through he decided to focus on applying for internships instead.

Coincidentally, sophomore Quinn Taylor is going on a road trip to Tybee Island, Georgia with two friends and her year-old puppy, Winston. The main reason she isn’t going home to Colorado is because of him, she said.

Winston can’t go on airplanes and if Taylor decided to travel by car it would be a 24-hour drive, but she also didn’t want to pay to have him boarded at a kennel for the week. Luckily, Taylor’s parents will be in Georgia visiting friends so she’ll be able to see them in between the ghost tour and beach visits she and her friends have planned.