As college students, we have gone through the last few months of the semester spending endless nights awake doing work. Caffeine has been your best friend and your worst nightmare. Your classes have made you significantly smarter, but you also feel so dumb when you receive a mind-boggling C- on a test for which you studied for days. In the last weeks of this semester, your brain has hit its mental capacity, forcing you to count down the days until your summer vacation, which you probably have been waiting for since your last summer vacation ended, begins. You then start to doze off during the day more frequently as your work becomes seemingly unbearable. As your mind drifts off to dreamland, you feel relief and then realize how eager you are to be done. You want to be in a peaceful stress-free zone where you can relax and be in your natural habitat. In memory of that feeling, here is a piece I wrote, hopelessly waiting for summer to begin. So close, but so far away.

Silence for a second, and then boom. Silent again for another second, then boom. You wonder what it is as you look to gaze upon what looks like waves crashing against the sun in front of your eyes. You turn to the left and see no one, not a soul to the right either.

You dip your hand in what could only be sand and feel the warmth of hundreds of tiny tan and white sand particles left behind from the ocean’s waves. You start to feel warm. Hot even, from the beating rays of the sun against your once-fair, now tan skin. You are ever-so-slowly changing colors, but it doesn’t bother you. You can feel the sun heating you from the inside out as if it were a blanket.

There are still waves crashing in front of your eyes. Every seven seconds, like clockwork. The water such a deep blue that a drop of water would leave a lasting blue impression in your hand. A few hundred yards back you see the waves starting to take shape. The slight impression of what only looks like a crinkle in the rug. As it gets closer and closer to the shore, the crinkle starts to turn bigger and bigger until it is as tall as a wall that could crush anything in sight. But there is nothing. Not a single person making a noise, or dog paddling out to fetch a tennis ball or a crab hiding behind or under rocks.

You are alone. And for the first time since you could remember.

Boom. Silence. Boom. Silence

It is strangely calming to know that you are all alone. At the beach. Lying on a bed of sand and listening to the calming waves of the ocean make you slowly fall asleep. You are peaceful.

And then you hear an alarming noise. It sounds like a mixture between a car horn and a barking dog. Beep. Beep. Beep. BEEP.

All of a sudden, you wake up. You are sitting at your desk with the light still shining bright upon your arm. It feels warm, just as warm as you felt in your dream. And then, you feel a sudden thirst. It brings your memory back to the ocean for what seemed like hours which actually was just the three-hour nap you took while you were studying for your chemistry final at 8 am. It is 7:07.

You still have a little bit of time to cram in that extra table your professor said could be helpful to memorize, or you could journey back to that beach where you were alone and only listened to the sounds of the waves crashing every seven seconds like clockwork and felt the warmth of the sun beating against your still-fair skin.

If only it wasn’t a dream. Oh, but it was.