We all remember the feeling: saying goodbye to our favorite teachers for the year, perched on the edges of our seats, waiting on that final bell to ring. Flooding the courtyards, hugging each other, before moving as one amorphous mass to the parking lots, to the buses, to our parents' cars. Whether we were freshmen, sophomores, juniors or even seniors, the last day of a high school year felt much the same — with varying degrees of bittersweetness.
College is a different story. First of all:
1. Summer classes aren't just for people who fail.
For a high schooler, classes in summer are rare: reserved only for the very unfortunate or the very unlucky. In college, not so much. Summer classes are almost accepted as an inevitability. There's always that one class you can get out of the way over the summer term, or the one credit you need to make up in order to graduate on time.
2. You have more time off, but somehow it feels like less.
How does three months somehow feel like no time at all, when two years ago two months felt like an endless expanse of free time to procrastinate your summer reading?
3. Even if you don't have summer classes, you feel like you should.
You wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night thinking "There's definitely a class I should be taking right now."
4. "An internship? Is that something that I need?"
It's unpaid labor exchanged for the privilege of putting it down on your resume. And yes, it's probably something that you need. Everyone on your Facebook feed seems to have one, after all. Where do you get one?
5. And finally, every college kid's favorite part of the summer:
Not that there aren't high school kids that work over the summer — but once you make it to college, you're no longer taking the initiative when you get a summer job. It's expected. Plus, you need that extra minimum wage income.
For Activities.
Despite the responsibilities you acquire the older that you get, we can never shake that school's out feeling somewhere around the end of May. No matter how long its been since the last blissfully free summer, that warm, open feeling never really leaves us.
