“Never, ever underestimate the importance of having fun."

RANDY PAUSCH

Without a doubt, the favorite holiday of all American university students is the Spring Break.

It is usually a week of holidays in March or April, in fact during the Spring season, in which students generally travel outside the university campus to new and fun destinations.

During my five years as a student in an American college I wasn't always able to travel and have fun experiences, but out of the few travel opportunities I had, one was for Spring Break and to one of the most famous Spring Break destinations: Fort Lauderdale, in Florida.

Consider that my university campus was near the American capital, Washington DC, and therefore a flight was needed to get to Florida. I decided to leave alone because over there was a former boyfriend of mine who had moved the year before after finishing college and was also a very good beach volleyball player.

It was a fantastic 5-day adventure! I have never experienced a week as fun as that one among beach volleyball players, beach parties and so many other unforgettable moments.

No one can deny fun and parties are great, but not all Spring Breaks were so fun during my college years. My last year at university, trying to do the best for my systems engineer degree, my work group and I decided to stay at the university to complete our project. We had a very important sponsor, the MITRE Corporation with a very challenging project regarding automatic flight systems for unmanned aircraft. It was a hard decision to skip fun Spring Break and stay on-campus but it paid off very well since we managed to get the highest grade on the project, our sponsor was happy and we also won two awards in the competitions between universities, one at the University of Virginia and the other at the West Point Academy.

Once again. the experience "on the field" has confirmed, as I have always thought, that the important thing in the end is finding the right balance between parties and friends and responsibility and work.