So, I’m going to Florida for spring break — and yes, I plan on rubbing that in everyone’s face as much as possible.

This is my first major trip I’ve handled start to finish by myself. I’ve gone to Minneapolis a few times just me, myself and I, but I’ve never traveled more than a few hours.

I booked a flight. I figured out how I’m going to get to and from the airport. I’ve been planning events with the family I’m visiting while I’m down in sunny Florida (told you I’d be rubbing it in). I even bought a swimsuit for the beach. All I have left to plan is to ask a friend to watch my cats for the few days I’m gone.

Traveling by oneself is probably the most grown-up thing a person can do. In a time where twenty-somethings (especially those of us who haven’t hit our mid-twenties) are in limbo between being a “real” adult and a child, striking a balance between play and work becomes especially difficult. Play too much, you’re childish. Work too much, you’re anal.

Travel, especially travel that you’ve arranged yourself, is a blend of these two, allowing a happy medium where we twentysomethings can stand and declare ourselves adults.

Traveling involves so much more than just securing the funds and picking dates. Where will you sleep? How will you get there? How much will this airline charge me for a carry-on? Is first-class worth not eating for a month? It takes a keen scheduler to make sure the trip happens as smoothly as possible.

But for a trip to succeed? Well, it has to be fun. There has to be an element of letting loose, letting your hair down and lounging on a beach with a margarita served to you by a muscular, well-oiled cabana boy. Business trips have their place and even can be fun (if you’re a nut like me), but real vacations need to be either a break or a nonstop wild ride, depending on what you need.

Usually, I find that we each struggle with either one or the other. Personally, it’s the second. If I go on a trip, I need to know exactly what I’m doing. If it’s relaxing, where? If it’s having fun, how long will it take?

But that doesn’t mean I can’t get the much needed R&R. I fully plan on unplugging while I’m gone — no emails, no work calls, so on and so forth. I debated abandoning social media as well, and still haven’t decided if I’ll be posting photos of the beach to Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat during the trip or if I’ll just share everything later.

Again, this action leads to a strange mix of child and adult — it’s responsible to avoid responsibilities once in a while. Right? I think. Actually, I don’t really know.

But I can say this for sure — part of being an adult is knowing when to rest. It’s one of the reasons I claim that the ultimate sign of adulthood is setting (and keeping) a bed time. Rest is part of taking care of yourself just as much as exercise or eating right is.

So, yes, a lot of work goes into planning a trip. But it’s completely worth it in the end. Regardless of what you do while on vacation, it’s still a time to recoup — whether that involves a beach or a roller coaster or a museum or all of the above is up to you.

Is this all just a way for me to brag about my trip to somewhere warm and sunny? Maybe — but I still stand by my point. Adults take charge of their own lives, and that means telling everyone to leave you alone because you have a date with sunset and a mimosa.

Kjerstine Trooien is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].