I was sitting on a padded bench along the stern of a powered catamaran, drinking a rum punch while the ship pitched across the Caribbean Sea last week. Like many students, I interned this summer, which meant my summer vacation was the opposite. It was 12, 40-hour plus weeks. It was a fantastic experience, and a great opportunity, but it meant a family vacation would have to occur later than ever.

Throughout the summer, and especially the start of the school year, I could feel myself dragging. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” was ringing true (in an overworked way, not a Jack Nicholson in The Shining sort of way). So when I arrived in Puerto Rico last Wednesday, I was ready to enjoy myself.

That boat trip was the next day. It started with a serious safety presentation, before heading out to sea for snorkeling. Once we got back, the bar was opened, and a lunch spread was set up. Then, we traveled to Flamenco Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches on earth, as determined by the kinds of people who rate the world’s beaches. I was walking across the beach with my mom, my feet making classic-looking footprints in the beach. 

I had snorkeled above coral reefs. I had walked along beaches. I was drinking rum on a boat in a tropical island. In short, it was paradise.

My dad works for an airline, and there’s a timeshare that is shared between my family and another. This has given my family the opportunity to see some interesting places, places we could never have afforded otherwise. These are treasured family memories, ones that I’d neve want to give up.

And this vacation, although abbreviated for myself due to my class schedule, was in that same vein. It was another place we visited (we’ve never vacationed in the same place twice). 

Back to the boat, which held 40 vacationers interested in some combination of rum, beaches and up-close views of coral and fish. We were on our way back from Flamenco Beach to the harbor we left from that morning. 

One of the crew members was a thin white guy, with skin that kept its Northern tone a bit better than I’d expect in a resident on a tropical island. He was a Tennessee Titans fan, and the slight Southern drawl revealed he was a transplant from somewhere in the mainland United States.

What a life, I thought. He’s on a boat every day. He’s back on the mainland by 4 o’clock. On board, he’s the life of the party, pointing out the best places to snorkel, making the strongest drinks, and cracking jokes.

Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, to have that job? To live in “island time” and get out of the constant hustle found back home?

No, I thought, I don’t have it in me. Each night I’d be back in our condo, wondering about the work I was missing. I was aware that I missed out on football games and work shifts, reporting and writing.

The vacation was fantastic. I ate food that doesn’t exist here in Ashland, drank espresso and mojitos that are not as well executed in Ashland. Even though Puerto Rico is part of the United States, it felt like a foreign country in these ways.

But of course, once I got home, it was clear there’s no place like home sweet Ohio, with its cornfields and its football obsession. It is the place where I study, the place where I work, and the place I am glad to be.