As I sat at the kitchen table the other night mapping out my free time for the summer, I realized it was all too limited.

This summer, I’m faced with a 40-hour work week, a night class that's an hour-long commute from my job, writing for The Odyssey, prepping for a fall sports season, along with the process of completely moving out of my house all hanging over my head. You could say I’m a little stressed out.

All I was left to ponder as I sat there, neck-deep in lesson plans, Pinterest boards and ordering textbooks was “When did summer stop being summer?”

Growing up, summer always involved setting up sprinklers in the backyard, bike rides to Dairy Queen, lemonade stands in the front yard and building super cool tree forts in the woods behind my house.

When I hit high school, it meant adventures with friends, pool parties, bonfires and working part time so that I could fill my gas tank and buy ice cream. All things considered, summer was pretty great then, too.

Then college rolled around.

Ah, college. I entered a world of complete uncertainty, four major changes, financial turmoil and a feeling of being perpetually underwater. This meant I had to stop using my summers for all of the great things I once did. I had to get a job and get serious about graduating on time, researching grad schools and had to start thinking about long term plans.

Goodbye part-time job, hello full-time position as a professional child wrangler/ care provider.

So long sprinklers and pool parties, hello to sweat, 100 percent humidity and athletic training.

Goodbye bike rides to Dairy Queen, hello to hour-long commutes and homework.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have for sure found many perks to growing up. College is great. Having the freedom to do my own thing and be responsible for myself is great.

But a lot of times I get halfway through the week and find myself wanting to tear my hair out. Collapsing into bed every night only to wake up the next day and do it again? Hard pass.

Many a day being an adult sounds much less than appealing. I find myself wishing that I could trade making a cooler of Kool Aid for 90 campers for sitting at the bottom of my driveway attempting a business startup by making a few dollars off of my lemonade stand.

Being an adult is not all it’s cracked up to be, and from what I can recall, I spent a lot of my time as a child wishing that I could just grow up already. If I have one regret it’s that I spent a lot of my childhood wishing my way to adulthood, desperately trying to grow up and be independent.

So if there are any 9-year-olds sitting inside on their smartphones right now that are reading this instead of going outside and being a kid — don’t take this time for granted.

Twenty One Pilots said it best: "Out of student loans and treehouse homes, we all would take the latter."