The moment when school begins and everyone’s summer plans wrap up is an iconic one. When I was only a brand new college freshman, I witnessed hugs and catching up between upperclassmen that I hoped to experience as a returning student.
When I arrive back on Samford’s campus this year, it will be much different than when I moved in as a nervous freshman who overpacked and barely knew 10 people on campus. I will see people I have not seen since the spring, and I will hear about their summers, each completely different.
For the most part, family vacations, swimming pools, road trips and occasional summer jobs fill the summers of high school. There are maybe a few camps thrown in – some fun camps, some educational camps. However, I have a good feeling that the summers in college are much different. As I have seen online, the vacations are bigger, the jobs are more important and the camps are well run by the college volunteers.
In hindsight, I accomplished this expectation a bit. I went to London for two weeks with Samford, I kept up my job from the school year with a few more hours and I helped out at a camp for one week. I felt busy enough to where I was productive, but I still had a break. I saw a lot of my family due to both trauma and the joy of having three and five-year-old cousins, and I learned and grew in ways that cannot exactly be documented. However, it is coming to my attention that in the competitive college atmosphere I am living in, summers will begin to be less of a break and more of a head start for the next semester or for a career path.
I did not have an internship this summer. I did not spend two months researching abroad. I did not invest my entire summer into working a summer camp. I did not make exceptional amounts of money. While I know that the time that I have had has been productive in working at a local small business, writing for the Odyssey, and taking small road trips here and there, when I tell someone about it, it appears as if I have done nothing. The stories I have from working in retail and the music I now associate with certain roads and cities does not necessarily equate to a productive summer on paper. In fact, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I should be doing in the future; I was not going through the “correct” motions of a striving college student this summer. Not if the motions are getting an internship and knowing exactly what steps will lead up to the ideal career and perfect accomplishments.
I often try to avoid competition, but in the competitive atmosphere I inevitably place myself in at Samford, I find myself questioning my summer choices based on the highly successful, professional and extremely hip choices of others. I have a few good stories, but my entire summer is neither an amazing story that people will lose their minds over nor something to jot down on my resumé.
However, if I had a huge commitment this summer, I would not have been able to go on a few road trips or spontaneously go to camp for a week. I am still a kid, and I will eventually find it difficult to drive out of town within a few days notice. I had time to do almost nothing for a day; that too will eventually not be a possibility. I do want a crazily successful summer at some point, maybe including an internship. Even with that summer choice, I lose some of the small joyful events I found this summer though they may be hard to remember when I talk about my summer on the spot.
When I take my first literature class this semester, I will remind myself once again that most interesting literary personalities do not have their lives together in any way that is remotely successful. I cannot think of any notable literary personality off the top of my head who does have his or her life completely on track. As I study these characters, I will remove all competitive influences and see the beauty in their tangled life events. That -- meaning tangled, uncertain life events -- should be included in the description of a college summer.
