Springtime in Binghamton — Long Island girls break out their designer shades, hipsters flock to the fields for some ultimate Frisbee and everyone goes on “crazy awesome” spring break vacations.

Just kidding.

The majority of you will go home, watch some crappy (and/or awesome) reality TV shows and sleep all day because none of your friends have the same break as you. You probably won’t even get any schoolwork done, like you told yourself you would. And me? I’ll be right here in Binghamton, working my minimum-wage job and passing the time with online games such as “Sushi Cat.”

This isn’t exactly what I pictured my spring break would amount to. I had high expectations, thanks to the yearly MTV spring break specials. The bar was set when I was in ninth grade — you know, back when it was actually “cool” to watch MTV. Vanessa Minnillo was hosting “TRL Cancun” and 50 Cent was performing “Candy Shop,” a song that forever defiled lollipops and shattered the integrity of Mr. Owl and his beloved Tootsie Pops.

Boy, did I have a future to look forward to: booty-shaking competitions, beefy man-candy, a chance to see 50 Cent’s (nine?) gunshot wounds up close. And although it was very unlikely that I would ever win a wet T-shirt contest, I still had hope.

As March 27 approaches, I find myself reminiscing about my preconceived notions of spring break. But the more I reminisce, the lamer my ninth grade fantasy seems. Watching YouTube videos of MTV spring break specials of the past only make it worse; I could have sworn I was watching “Girls Gone Wild.”

For a show with hundreds of half-naked people running around, MTV’s spring break show is surprisingly lame. It’s the same clich√É.√© party consisting of the same three things year after year: beach balls, booze and boobs. There are only so many fake breasts you can handle in an hour before you just get bored, though some may beg to differ on this point.

Sometimes I feel a little bit like Janis Ian from “Mean Girls” — I just want to ask the spring break-goers, “Did you have an awesome time? Did you drink awesome shooters, listen to awesome music and then just sit around and soak up each others awesomeness?”

Maybe there are some of you out there actually pursuing a spring break of this sort; maybe you’re even going to “MTV Spring Break 2010.” All jokes aside, that’s cool. Different strokes for different folks. Just don’t enter a bikini contest that will probably end up on YouTube, unless you want to make it really, really easy for people like me to make fun of you.

What I’m trying to get at here is that you don’t need to go to a tropical island, spend $1,000 and party like Van Wilder in order to enjoy your spring break. I’m completely content with working this spring break, in order to save money for adventures far superior to body shots and wet T-shirt contests.

In high school, the media fills our heads with fantasies about what college is going to be like and, usually, they’re bogus. College may not be as wild and crazy as we thought as ninth graders watching “TRL,” but it’s still pretty cool. In fact, I like it better this way.