The “typical” spring break (according to MTV and the like) involves dancing half naked with other half naked people on top of more half naked people, shouting which fraternity/sorority you belong to at the camera while stumbling drunk through the writhing mass of supple bodies.

But what if you simply don’t want to, as the Eddie Murphy song goes, “party all the time?” What if you would like to spend the week following spring break hangover-free? Just because you haven’t made plans to go to Vegas, Mexico or any other place conducive to obscene amounts of drinking, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun. Hollywood and the media often portray college students as having fun only when they’re at a party full of drunken debauchery.

So, for those of you out there who don’t need to drink heavily in order to get the most out of life (and if you drink heavily you probably won’t remember if you have fun anyways), here are some things to do over spring break that also don’t involve sitting in front of the TV until your brain rots:

Read. Seriously. Reading for class sucks, but reading can actually be fun when you’re doing it at your own pace. Nobody’s asking you to read War and Peace – just pick up something that isn’t a trashy romance novel or a comic book and read for an afternoon. You’ll find that you’ll feel better and more refreshed than you would after a four-hour television marathon. If you don’t want to read anything too taxing on the mind, check out the best seller’s list at: www.nytimes.com/pages/books.

Make something. Devote a little of your free time to more creative avenues. Take a look at www.instructables.com, where people give you step-by-step instructions on how to make some interesting things. You can find instructions on how to make a wind generator out of an old scanner to something basic like making a really awesome paper airplane.

Go biking in Venice. The best way to enjoy the perpetually beautiful weather in SoCal is to be sober. Take a nice relaxing bike ride along the beach, taking in that nice cool breeze and maybe stopping for something to eat at one of the many nice little shops here.

This is by no means all there is to do. Los Angeles has a lot to offer, so go look for it! You can go to museums (check out the new Broad museum at LACMA), check out the Body Worlds exhibit at California Science Center, start a spring garden, have a barbecue – the options are endless. So instead of spending spring break waging war on your mind’s well being, go do something that won’t make you feel like you’ve wasted a week.