"It was great! How was yours?" Chances are, you've probably had some variation of this interaction dozens of times within the last week. You have your spiel down about your job/internship/vacation and how great it was. Your internship was so fun, but it's great to be back at school!
Let's cut the crap.
Your summer was average. Your internship was fine, but your hours sucked or your boss was awful. You were stressed about money, went through a breakup, dealt with family issues, or sat on your couch watching Netflix. You didn't get enough exercise, missed your friends, or worried about what the next year of school would bring. Maybe a combination of the above.
And that's totally fine.
I've seen enough indie rom-coms to know that the perfect summer involves falling in love while at your summer employment, preferably at an amusement park or a movie theater, and then spending your days holding hands by the beach or sharing an ice cream on the boardwalk, usually through a warm filter giving everything that wistful vintage look. Well, my summer wasn't the plot of "The Last Song" or "The Notebook" (or your Nicholas Sparks novel of choice), and neither was yours.
I'm not saying that you have to iterate your entire three months of good and bad events when someone asks you the obligatory, "How was your summer?" So much of our identities are defined by what we do, so we only want to present the bright, shining versions of ourselves, and not the dull, faded versions that we can sometimes be. It's easy to compare your summer to someone else's and only imagine the shiny version that they are offering. Personally, I then compare this person's summer to mine and just think how they had a better time than me. I did this quite a few times until I remembered that this isn't a contest.
There is no third-party judge scoring us on our personal growth, professional development, or interpersonal relationships. No one is writing a compare and contrast essay on our experiences, and I am the only one who can truly see what I gained from these past three months. Even the shining version of this person's summer isn't so bright when you look up close. The perfect summer doesn't exist. Michael Cera isn't the protagonist in my life and there is no shot of me walking down the beach to a Smiths song. That summer was never real, is still not real, and will never be real, which is good because I should be my own protagonist. And I don't even like The Smiths.
