By: Trevor Roberts, Peak Associate

Another Reading Break has come and gone and you did absolutely nothing the entire time. Don’t think your entire break is lost though. You can still make yourself look cool with just one word: deception. Forget faking studying (especially if you care about trivial things like academic honesty), instead, convince your friends that you went on an awesome trip, using these simple tips:

Tip 1: Sunburn — There isn’t really a natural way to do this unless you want to go skiing in your bathing suit, but luckily we have these things called tanning salons. Simply ignore all of the posted rules and you should be thoroughly sunburned in no time.
Remember: the worse the burns are, the more people will make fun of you, but the less likely they are to suspect you of lying about travelling.

Tip 2: Fake the photos — Now if you’re starting this after reading break, you’ll have to say that you went to North Korea or something to explain why you haven’t been posting this whole time. Once that’s established though, it should only take a couple of hours with a green screen and Photoshop to get everything done.
Of course, just getting the cliché tourist pictures isn’t good enough. You may want to post a fake news article about an event that happened in the place you supposedly visited, then fake a photo of you documenting it.

Tip 3: Souvenirs — This requires a bit of prep work. Visit your relatives at their respective homes, and steal back any souvenirs you may have given them from your last trip. Then, simply redistribute them amongst your friends.
Your relatives definitely won’t notice they’re gone, and even if they do, they will assume that they lost them and will be too embarrassed to tell you. Because your friends likely won’t actually care about the dumb trinkets you get them, this technique can theoretically be repeated an infinite number of times.

Tip 4: Create a backstory — Make sure you can answer for everything you would normally do on a trip. Learn a few phrases in the local language, at least one of which you should pronounce incorrectly or use in the wrong context. Ensure you’re aware of all the typical tourist observations (e.g. “the Mona Lisa is actually a lot smaller than you think”) and tell everyone how much you appreciate the culture and practices of the people you were visiting, especially if the activities you said you were doing have nothing to do with cultural practices.

The biggest thing to remember is that if you’re at this point, you’re in too deep. There’s absolutely no turning back.