Pranay Gangaram
Senior Pranay Gangaram is planning to go on two senior trips this year — one with some friends from MVHS and another with his middle school friends. In light of this, he acknowledges that when it comes time to plan them, he will have to deal with twice the amount of planning.
“Some of my friends from middle school go to different schools, so we’re still trying to figure out a time to plan the trip,” Gangaram said. “I didn’t expect my friends to be so busy over the summer since their families had trips too, so it’s kind of hard to plan.”
Currently at the forefront of their planning process, Gangaram hasn’t encountered many complications besides finding a convenient time for everyone to go on the trip. He mentions that, while the budget has been in the back of his mind, since he will have to accommodate the cost of two senior trips, he isn’t too worried about it since he is mostly paying for the trips himself.
“I worked a job last summer at the YMCA so I’ve saved some money, but I think my parents might pitch in a little bit, just in case,” Gangaram said. “I know what I can roughly pay, but it is kind of hard to find a hotel or Airbnb.”
The trip Gangaram currently has planned with his MVHS friends is likely to be a road trip to LA because he and his friends felt like they wouldn’t be able to talk easily on a plane ride, and they wanted a journey where they could have conversations on the road. Despite this, he still emphasizes the importance of planning early and suggests buying plane tickets while they are cheaper for other friend groups who are planning to fly for their senior trips.
“It’s important to know where you want to go because especially if you’re flying, the tickets will get really expensive if you wait too long,” Gangaram said. “Also, make sure to know how many people are going and try your best not to change that amount, because that adds a whole other set of separate planning.”
Katelyn Wong
After considering several options, senior Katelyn Wong and her friends ultimately decided that they would be traveling to Lake Tahoe for their senior trip. Although they were also contemplating other locations such as Santa Barbara, Wong believes that in the end, it was factors like budget and convenience that helped them make the final decision to go to Lake Tahoe.
“Budget was definitely a big thing for us,” Wong said. “One of our friends has a house in Lake Tahoe so it’s basically like free housing for us. Our group is pretty big, so finding a big enough space where we can all fit was going to be pretty costly.”
In addition to housing, Wong believes that Lake Tahoe was the best spot for them because they would be able to all drive up together, rather than having to pay extra for airfare. Lake Tahoe also has a lot of outdoor activities to do, something that Wong and her friends plan on doing a lot of over the summer. Despite only being in the early stages of planning, Wong is already looking forward to going on the trip with her friends.
“I’m really looking forward to the trip because I think it’s a good opportunity for us,” Wong said. “It’s our final hangout before college, and I’m really excited to spend that time with my friends and make memories that I’ll remember forever.”
Many of the friends that Wong will be going with are people she’s been friends with since preschool; because of her history with them, Wong believes this trip will serve as a nice end to her senior year, and will be something that she will not regret. Wong strongly encourages others to embark on their own senior trips as well and urges them to look past initial restrictions such as cost and find solutions to financial issues.
“I think senior trips are a good opportunity for you to have one last opportunity to just be with your friends and have fun,” Wong said. “It doesn’t need to be a super extravagant trip either, and it doesn’t even need to be super far away.”
Vanshika Turkar
Although senior Vanshika Turkar’s senior trip plans with her friends have differed greatly from when she first considered the trip in sophomore year, Turkar and her friends ultimately decided on a trip to San Diego during the summer following senior year. Initially, Turkar and her friends had wanted to travel to other places but settled on traveling to San Diego after encountering several issues.
“We wanted to go on a cruise or go a little bit further away at least three hours from here,” Turkar said. “But some of our friends had visa issues, so they couldn’t travel out of the country. So, we ended up just staying in San Diego because we could fly over there and still be close enough so that our parents weren’t really worried about us.”
Turkar explains that the beginning of their planning was stressful since the group lacked a concrete planning progress, but once things started to come together, she enjoyed the process more. She says that there are around four people who have been working together to research and take on the bulk of the planning, but she and her friend recently did a group call to make sure everyone was on the same page for what they decided.
“We got to do things like calling up hotels together, and it was a fun process, being more independent and doing it yourself,” Turkar said. “Normally your parents would do it, but it was quite fun doing it this way.”
Since a couple of her friends have been to the area before, Turkar mentions that they have a general idea of what the city is like and what activities the group can do there. As of now, Turkar’s friend group has finished booking the main parts of their senior trip, including plane tickets and hotels, but still has yet to hone in on the specific details of their day-to-day itinerary. Their goal is to finish all the planning by the end of April since the trip is scheduled for right after graduation, during the second week of June.
“I think it’s very important to have a solid plan for where you want to go and how long you want to go, because for us once that happened, it was a lot easier to plan everything else out, but especially if you’re not really tight on your budget,” Turkar said. “Some of us had a pretty tight budget, but if you’re not that tight on your budget, if you want to get started to figure out the dates and where you’ll go first, then everything else kind of falls together.”
