There are very few things that feel better than coming off of a week of doing nothing. Especially if part of that nothing involves eating large amounts of turkey and pumpkin pie. Which brings me to a curious sidebar — where are spring's seasonal foods?

There are the harvest foods of fall, the barbecue of summer and, of course, winter's soul-warming comfort foods and store-bought stocking stuffers. If spring wants to step it up and be able to contend on the highest seasonal level, it needs to bring in some unique flavor to the game, and it needs to be more than Easter chiclets and herbal tea. Spring is missing that extra dimension of shifting but delicious flavors that would bolster its fairly unimpressive repertoire of flowers, rain and lent. But that's not what I want to talk about today.

As you might discern from the 100th person you run into before Thanksgiving and Christmas who says, “I really need this break,” vacation is valuable. And while I also understand the saying “I had a really nice vacation” is about as fresh and controversial as a Neily Todd article, I want to examine vacation from a slightly more nuanced angle. Though we all need vacation, there's more than one way to take it.

Just think about today. How many mental vacations have you already taken during class or walking around campus, or even while reading this article? We have to do it. It's an essential daily human necessity, just like shelter, or checking your cell phone when you don't actually have any need for it. What about skipping classes? That's a vacation in itself — sometimes planned, sometimes booked at the last minute. Or where you find yourself desperately procrastinating work by surfing Facebook or Googling your own name.

There's one piece of uniting advice I have about any and all vacations — schedule them as much as possible and earn your time off. Everything feels better when you think you deserve it. Once you get into the working world, this is something everyone has to do far in advance. But let's take it at a smaller level; I would suggest you schedule one day off or at least a light day in every week. For me and many others, for religious reasons, this day comes each Sunday. I completely refuse to engage in any activity outside going to church, watching football, eating pizza and maybe catching some of Fox's Sunday night schedule.

But any day of the week will work just as well in terms of vacation — many of us use Friday or Saturday. If you're going to skip class, do your best to plan this ahead as well. It will give you something to look forward to during the week. Do your best to plan even your mental vacations. In a boring class? Block these once every 10 or 15 minutes. Talking to a freshman sorority rush? Maybe once every other sentence. The point is, half the fun of anything is preparation plus anticipation. In order to compose your vacations for maximum value, plan ahead and don't taint these escapes with streaks of work or reality, otherwise it's not a vacation at all.

Justin Poythress is a senior in Peabody College. He can be reached at j.poythress@vanderbilt.edu.