This spring break, while some students were busy working on their tans or watching daytime talk shows, a handful of students demolished old homes, tutored children, worked at homeless shelters, did yard work or helped run a vice presidential motorcade, among other things.

"I didn't get a tan and I didn't get blasted in Cancun, but I had a blast," says Brendan G. Conway '00, a government concentrator in Leverett House who interned with the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C, through the Harvard College Internship Program (HCIP).

Why might students elect to spend a mid-semester vacation doing hard physical or mental labor?

"You learn a lot. Everyone got to use power tools and sledge hammers," says Samuel Esquith '00, co-director of Habitat for Humanity, a program under the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA).

Others say they gained experience that could not be obtained in the lecture hall.

"I got to see first hand what happens in a humanitarian effort [and] find out more about the international human law surrounding the Kosovo conflict," Conway says. "It's something that really doesn't come through in class."

Susan Arnott, coordinator of the Radcliffe College Spring Break Externship Program, says alternative spring breaks also provide the opportunity to examine potential plans for the future.

"For some students it's a really good way for them to see whether the career they have in mind is good for them," she says.

Colleen M. Gargan '02 says one of the biggest advantages of the alternative spring break is the minimal time commitment.

"It was only a week, so it was a little taste. It helped me decide what I might want to do with my life," she says.

But don't think every minute of the alternative spring break is spent hard at work.

"I had a blast. I got to hang out in the city. I went to museums and some clubs," says Gargan, who interned in New York City with the New Press publishing company through HCIP.

Esquith even says his time renovating houses in Baltimore was "similar to spring break on the beach."

"It's a way to have fun and meet new people," he says. "It's relaxing in the way that physical labor can be after half a semester of mental labor."

The PBHA Alternative