After studying day in and day out for nine months, you are excited to be back home and spend your days underneath the summer sun relaxing with your friends and family. You can already picture yourself going on road trips every week, sitting around a bonfire listening to music, lying on the beach listening to the waves roll in, and making memories with the people that you love. With school being over for the next three months, nothing could possibly go wrong, could it? After only two weeks of being back in your comfort zone, your fun-filled summer dreams are crushed by reality. You have things that need to be done and money to be saved. With that, your expectations are squelched and you find yourself questioning the point of a summer break if there is really no break.
1. Free time
Summertime means free time, right? Wrong. Most of your time will be spent away from friends, family, and relaxation and in the confines of your poorly paying summer job. You find yourself at work more often than you are at home.
2. Working out
With all of the very little amount of free time that you do have, you plan on putting in work at the gym to get that "summer body" you have always dreamed of. For the first week, you are dedicated and swear you can already see results. But by the time the second week comes around, you catch yourself sitting at the stationary bike scrolling through Pinterest for 45 minutes and you decide to try again next summer.
3. Tanning
When you finally get a day off, you decide to lay out on a blanket in your backyard and soak up some sun. But your translucent is not used to so much (or really any) sun exposure, and after 45 minutes of searching for that sun-kissed glow, you get sun-slapped and cannot find a single place on your body that doesn't feel like it has been stung by a swarm of bees. The mere act of breathing causes widespread sharp pain that causes tears to form in the corner of your eyes. Then you realize that today was your only day off of work this week, and you go back in early tomorrow morning. You cannot decide whether to go into work and suffer through both the physical pain and the emotional pain secondary to the harassment and laughter at your expense from your coworkers or to call off and try to recover in the air-conditioned safe haven that is your home.
4. Sleeping in
After finishing a 12 hour shift, you come home exhausted and fall into your bed. You have looked forward to this all day, and plan on sleeping for 15 hours without interruption. But you work another 12 hour shift early in the morning, and look at your long to-do list that seems to grow longer every day. So you chug two cups of coffee and tackle the items of highest priority, but feel the bags under your eyes continue to deepen.
5. Productivity
Don't even think about it. One word: Netflix.
