Yay! It's summer vacation! You have survived another year of school. You finally get to go home, relax, and let all of your worries fly away in the summer breeze...

Oh, wait. No, you can't.

After you turn sixteen, or earlier for many, you lose out on the beauty of summer relaxation and you enter into a very different world. Summer vacation equals working full-time instead of part-time, taking extra classes, and taking on other tasks that you could avoid during the school year. These are the struggles of summer (based on the true story that is my life).

It starts early on in your middle school or high school years. Your parents tell you that you need to be productive during the summer. They also tell you that, no, working on your tan is not productive. They do not care that you do not have that summer body that you have been working toward (in your mind), and they definitely do not care that so-and-so does not have to work or take classes or babysit or yada yada yada. So, like many, you set off to find your very first summer job. Cringe.

You apply to every local business that is hiring, even that sketchy Subway right near Stab Alley. Unfortunately, you have waited to long to start applying because you have been making up various excuses (you don't have a driver's license yet, so you have to wait until you get one, and you don't want to apply until after you go on that two-week vacation, because no one will hire someone who is about to be gone for two weeks), and there are no local jobs left. You are forced to look elsewhere.

You look at ads in the paper to see what you can find. You see that the amusement park that's a few towns over is hiring, and you think that it will be fun. You apply, you get an interview within a day, you drive there with your mother in the car to make sure that you don't get lost, you do the interview, you get the job, you start the week after, and you live in amusement-park-job-hell for the next four to six months.

Okay, too specific, but you get the point.

Anyway, maybe then the next summer you luck out and you hear that the local college is offering free summer courses to people your age. Your parents won't make you work if you are furthering your education for free, so you sign up for two online classes. However, you soon learn that they are actually more work than working and you wish that you had gone back to that amusement park job. Okay, no, nothing could make you want to go back to that amusement park job. Your online classes end a week before your regular classes start, so you get one week to relax. Except, you don't, because that time is spent planning for your classes.

Then, the next summer comes around, and you can't take free online classes, and you refuse to go back to your amusement park job, so you take to the job search again. You apply online to every job you can find that you qualify for. It has been three weeks. You have heard nothing. No interviews have been set, no questions have been asked about your application, you're lost. Your friends are still in high school for another month, your college friends are too far away, and your parents work all day. You are alone, you are bored, and you are struggling with summer...

In this case, "you" is me. Please send help.