Isn’t it a great time of year? I mean, you never know what the weather will do, every professor suddenly expects you to read, write and study for exams all at the same time, and the time for finding prime housing for next year is almost up.

I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that surviving this time of year wouldn’t even be possible without the savior that is spring break.

I’d really like to say that I’m doing something magnificent or life-changing over break. I’d love to be heading off to Europe with only a backpack and a passport, driving to another part of the country to do a community service project or flying to a warmer climate to lay on the beach all day and forget about cold, snowy Wisconsin.

But no. Broke college student that I am, I’m riding in a car for three hours to cold, snowy Minnesota. And though there is a slim chance that there will be something magnificent and life-changing waiting there for me, somehow I have a pretty good idea of how I will spend my break — doing absolutely nothing.

While the rational, school-minded part of my brain is telling me that an entire week off is an ideal time to catch up on all that reading I’ve skipped out on so far in the semester, I have a feeling the more lazy part of my brain, the part that tells me to get up at noon, never change out of my pajamas and lay on the couch all day will win out.

However, while some may see my week of little-to-no-activity as a complete waste of time, I don’t see it that way at all. You see, while I’m at home I’ll be able to take advantage of a luxury I can’t afford while at school — namely, cable television.

Sure, I’ve read plenty of articles about how the current season of “The Real World” is the trashiest yet and what’s new in the latest episodes of “Six Feet Under.” But somehow, I still have to see it to believe it.

The thing I value most about cable television isn’t these prime-time shows, though. What I love about cable is its ability to glue you to a couch even when you have a to-do list a mile long. There is always something to watch on cable.

Sometimes I’ll get lucky and there will be a movie on HBO that I didn’t catch in theaters or on DVD. However, once that same movie is shown three times a day for a week straight on five (yes, five) HBO channels, it does get a bit repetitive. Truthfully, I figure I have about a day’s worth of watching that truly represents things I want to see. The rest, well, that’s another story.

When I had roommates and was able to afford cable in Madison, one of my favorite (and least productive) things to do on a lazy Saturday morning was to stay in bed and flip on the television. Most often, I wound up watching one of three things: a series marathon, an “educational program” on the Discovery channel or a B-movie on TBS or TNT.

It’s these B-movies that got me thinking about why cable television is so great in the first place. We’ve all seen these movies, most of us several times — you know, “Kindergarten Cop,” “Adventures in Babysitting,” “My Girl.” I don’t particularly like any of these movies — truly, I know they aren’t any good whatsoever — but if any of them are on, it’s a good enough excuse to take me away from whatever I need to do and make me plop down and procrastinate for two hours (which, strangely, is exactly how long all of these movies end up being).

I’ve also seen these movies multiple times, which makes my watching them again even more of a mystery. But I figure lounging in front of the set all day is just easier than trying to find something constructive to do in small-town Minnesota.

So, even if I had deluded myself into thinking that I was going to play catch-up this spring break, odds are I’ll be doing nothing of the sort. Rather, I’ll be spending my week off in the company of 1980s teen movies, reruns of “Happy Days” and, hopefully, some of my oft-missed favorites from the world of HBO.

It may not be the most glamorous week imaginable, but it’s good enough for me.