Remember when summer meant sleeping in every morning, going swimming and playing with your neighborhood best friends every day? Remember when summer nights meant making s'mores over bonfires and watching scary movies with your friends until late at night? Sadly, those days are over.
Now, for most college kids, we are working a summer job to make money because we are broke, working unpaid at a summer internship because we need to find a real job someday and trying to make time for family and friends. Sometimes, I think that the business of being at school is actually less exhausting than my summer schedule and here are seven reasons why:
1. Your schedule is inconsistent.
At least during the school year, you know exactly where you will be for 12-15 credit hours a week: in class.
2. Everyone assumes you are free, including you.
Plenty of people are asking you for favors or trying to make future plans with you, and it honestly feels like you are available, then all of the sudden you have plans every day for the next three weeks.
3. Your summer job.
At school, you're used to spending four hours a day "studying" (but really sitting in the library chatting for 30 percent of the time). At home, you are expected to work 20-40 hours a week, with long shifts that either start too early or end too late.
4. You have to make time for high school friends, family, significant others AND college friends, and still make it home by curfew.
Keeping up with everyone is significantly more difficult when they are not all conveniently residing within two miles of you, and your boyfriend can't spend the night. There aren't enough weekends off for you to visit your college friends and still have time to reconnect with the family and old friends.
5. Your kitchen is not the dining hall.
While no dining hall buffet compares to a home-cooked meal, with your wonky schedule, your mom is not always willing to wait around and provide you a hot and ready meal at any time of day like Norma in the dining hall. So, cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner can easily become the usual.
6. You miss your college roommate.
While family and high school friends are amazing in more ways than one, there is a special bond that you build with your college roommate. When you are home, there is no one to talk to you about your life problems until you go to sleep every night.
7. You are expected to have your sh*t together.
At least at school, you can get way too drunk on the weekends and procrastinate pretty much all the time, and you can rest assured that at least one of your friends will ride the struggle bus with you. At home, you can do these things, but you have to face your parents, too.
Don't worry, sooner than later we will be back at school and wishing we could have these summer days and nights back.
