Spring break for a college student is a BIG DEAL — where you go, what you do, and the Instagram pictures you post while on your trip to make all your friends super jealous. You think to yourself how could anything possibly go wrong? Well, this year my spring break was anything but luxurious.
Instead of planning a relaxing getaway to some exotic beach, I decided to do something more useful with my time off. I had signed up with a group of fashion design and merchandising students to attend a trip to New York City. Visit the sites and market myself to many fashion companies since New York is the fashion capital of the United States. Weeks leading up to the trip, my excitement was through the roof. I had no idea what problems were about to cross my path.
The morning we were flying out for our trip our flight got delayed a half an hour. No big deal, a half hour gives me some more time to catch my breath and actually let the feeling sink in that I will actually be in New York City by that afternoon. Precisely 19 minutes before our boarding time our flight was canceled. Canceled! All in that short amount of time my perfect trip started to turn itself upside down. Dealing with many airline agents trying to get me and my group on another direct flight out seemed impossible. We ended up having to fly out of Chicago O'hare to Charlotte, North Carolina with a connecting flight to White Plaines, New York. We did not even get to our hotel until 3:00 AM the next morning.
While struggling with exactly how we were going to get ourselves to New York, we had forgotten about how our luggage would get there. Apparently, our luggage made its way on to the flight that was canceled. My suitcase made it to LaGuardia airport without me! My group and I just thought, "Oh it is easy we will file a claim and get our luggage to meet us at our hotel and everything will be fine." WRONG! Things are never that simple. We went a total of three days, with numerous accounts of calling the airport, the airline, and the delivery service before we received our luggage. May I remind you we were scheduled to meet with professional fashion companies. I was still in the sweatshirt and jeans that I had flown in — talk about business casual. Of course, after we had told them about our ordeal with traveling, they understood that we would not have shown up like this if we had had our luggage.
Once it seemed like all of our troubles had finally passed, our trip had started to get better, but not for all of us. One of the girls in my group had caught the flu on a plane. She was sick for three days, missing all the fun things we had planned like visiting the sites and meeting with businesses. She then decided that the best choice for her was to travel back home. After that, it never felt like our group was complete.
Now do not get me wrong I had a great time in my favorite place on Earth. The trip could have gone better, for sure, if we would have not faced all the problems in the beginning. But, I am glad that it was in this city rather than when I am trying to relax on a beach somewhere.
