It’s Friday night, the start of family weekend, and people are all around, but your folks couldn’t be harder to find. Not tonight. Maybe not this week. They’ll come another day. 

In the meantime, you’ve been trying to avoid the family reunions taking place in the streets near the university. 

You’re a senior and you don’t need that kind of naive optimism.

Despite the festivities, it’s simply another day in Tucson for you. 

The bars and coffee shops don’t beckon and call. They won’t at all for these next few days, not until the middle-aged masses embark on their return migration back toward suburbia.

During times like these, when even the extroverted are desperately looking for a way out of meeting all their friend’s parents, it’s best to find a few places to post up in solitude for a while.

You’ll have to rule out your house or apartment early. 

Your room may be safe, but hanging around your place is too much of a risk when gray-haired types visiting your roommates might wander into your kitchen to try and shake your hand. 

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Nope. Can’t bear to answer one more person wondering what your life goals and major are.

Your next attempt is to start working on homework that you, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t have remembered until Sunday. 

Usually it’s tough to find the motivation and focus you need to start homework on a Friday, but avoiding your roommates’ parents can be a stronger study aid than Adderall. 

Impossibly, that homework only kept you occupied for two hours when usually it takes a whole day to get done. 

You call friends, but the people not occupied entertaining their loved ones are stuck in the same situation you are. 

The only way to really make your escape on Family Weekend may be to get out of Tucson entirely. 

Arizona seems desolate at first glance, but the desert hides away its oases for those who care enough to actively seek them out. 

Going camping is a great way to escape from the UA whenever the occasion for flight may arise. If you have camping gear, you’re all set to go, and if you don’t, gear can be rented from the Student Recreation Center relatively cheaply. 

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Once you manage to convince a few of your outdoors-averse friends that they won’t starve or get covered in mosquito bites if they go with you, you’ve got yourself a real camping squad. 

Easier said than done.

Finally, you do make it out to the mountains. 

The clean air and beautiful views neutralize the existential stress that comes with being confronted about your future by every parent you accidentally met over the course of Family Weekend. 

The only worries left on your mind are the rocks you’re clearing away from the tent site and whether you’ll have enough fire wood to keep the camp fire lit all night.

If you’re a less pessimistic person, maybe you are having fun with all the parents on Family Weekend, but for those of you who aren’t as jovial, it’s totally understandable. 

Hanging out with parents just doesn’t do it for you, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Follow Scott Felix on Twitter.