Summer used to be a time for relaxation, vacation, fun, and, perhaps, most importantly, no school. Every time spring would roll around, students would all eagerly await the sweet few months of hot weather and nothing important to do. However, as we students get older, and are expected to have more responsibilities, most people consider getting a job for the summer.

Now, the number of jobs that will employ a student for only a few months, give or take a few vacation days and sick days, are very slim. Especially if you are a college student going to an out of state school, like myself. Luckily, I have been able to find a summer job, twice, four years apart, and right before my junior year of a school. Weird coincidence.

Another weird coincidence is that these jobs have made me feel some type of way for a period of my summer. This summer I worked two jobs, one at my dad's office doing data entry, and one job canvassing for an environmental organization. In the summer of 2014, I worked as a lifeguard. While I enjoyed my job doing data entry, it's a lot more fun than it sounds, the other two jobs caused me to have a bit of a crisis in those last few days in July and the first few days in August.

You see, both lifeguarding and canvassing caused me to feel like I had wasted my favorite time of the year. That I had been too focused on making money instead of doing things that I really wanted to do over the summer. I'm sure I'm not the only student who had a summer job, who felt like they had wasted their summer. Hey, I'm pretty sure that everyone has felt like they had wasted time doing things they hated when they could have been doing things they loved.

No one seems to know how to deal with this feeling, but wonder what could have been. Now, I'm not sure how to get rid of the feeling entirely, but I do know how to deal with the feeling of a student seemingly wasting their summer working. Get used to it.

I'm sorry if this is harsh, but it's the reality. Unless you become a teacher, you are going to have to spend every summer until retirement working. Even teachers have to spend their summer preparing for the next school year. And being a teacher is also is really hard, so don't do it for the vacations.

But just because you worked during the summer, doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. People still go on vacations, take day trips, and enjoy the many holidays and sales. Your boss will likely understand if you want to take days off, heck, they might even be taking days off for vacations as well.

All I'm saying is, enjoy the summer vacations you have, and if you did have a job over the summer, you probably made a ton of money, which is always a good thing.