When most people think of spring break they think of half dressed college kids funneling beer after beer while partying on some tropical beach sporting neon colored snapbacks and American flags. Not going to lie, I thought that's what it was suppose to be like, too. However, many students will spend their spring break one of two ways.

First, swearing their going to get ahead of all the work they have, then laying on the couch for a week and finish an entire Netflix series.

Or second, find their way down to Panama City or Cancun. I get it, it's fun running around with your friends for a week without any real responsibilities but when my friends came back and I asked them how their break was every single one of them said, "It was fun but never again." Enough said.

But what many students don't know about it a third choice. Alternative Break Programs, which offer a chance to travel somewhere you've never been before and volunteer with a specific organization. After a lot of my friends came back with rave reviews about Alternative Spring Breaks (SB) I figured why not, and then that way I could save my money to do something big senior year. But I learned so much more than I'll ever learn in a class.

How to bring it back.

The whole point of volunteering on a break isn't to just go away for a week, build a school, feel like a better person and then come back home and do nothing. ASB is about service learning -- you learn how to serve and help out your own community as well as others. You're suppose to bring back what you learned and share it with other people. When you find something you're really passionate about, get involved! Every school has some sort of information center.

Empathy > Sympathy.

You know the saying "put yourself in their shoes." Being sympathetic and feeling bad for people helps no one. Having empathy on the other hand gives you an understanding of the situation people are in and when you understand the problem at hand you can better think about ways you can help. It's like "give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish he eats for life." If you look down on people or a society because you think they cannot do for themselves, they will never learn. If you take the time to teach and work with them, they will run with it.

How to be adaptable.

You never really learn how little you need until you don't have anything. You learn to be more human and how to actually communicate with people in a way that doesn't have a 140 character minimum. When working with people there are certain universal languages; Music and laughter can unite everyone and as long as you can do that, you can go anywhere.

How to stay humble.

You get to see life from a different view point. On my alternative trip we went to Montego Bay, Jamaica to work with CUMI (the Committee for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill) and driving to the facility every day we would pass homes that in America we would consider to be in extreme poverty. But that was their daily life, and they never complained about it. They were so happy and welcoming that it makes you reflect on your own life and think about how all the little stuff you get upset about is so minuscule in the bigger picture.

Even working with the clients there, I would randomly stop and think about how lucky I was to be born without a disability because it is nothing you can do to control that, you can just make the most of the life you have.

Don't be too quick to judge.

I'm just going to leave this right here. Every one has different abilities and just because we don't have the same ones does not make anybody less of a person. I couldn't even type a paper on a typewriter much less use it to recreate the Mona Lisa.

Being there is enough.

Sometimes just being there to support someone or letting them know you're there for them. You learn to be a better friend. A better friend and ally to your own friends and to your own community.

How to monitor yourself.

Whether you are volunteering with an environmental, humanity, disability or mental illness, health, education, homelessness organization, you learn something. Maybe it's that you can do something to personally to better your water conservation; maybe it's in the language you use; maybe it's the fact that you now have the power to educate people, but regardless you are more aware of the situation.

Your team becomes a family.

Shout out to the most amazing people I was lucky enough to spend my spring break with! First off, you and your team all have the same mind set. You all want to set out to do something and make a difference so there is something you can immediately bond over. Secondly, being that there's less distractions without technology on these trips you really get to closely know people so quickly and it doesn't feel like a forced friendship. And going back to real life will give you such withdrawals but it's ok because you'll always have the groupchat.