After the stress of finals had come and gone, most of us were probably taken aback by the sudden realization that our freshman year was over and tat we had to go back home. We didn't want to leave, but we were reassured by the familiar comforts of our mom's homemade meals, our own bedroom and our high school classmates. Last August, the thought of coming home for the summer and experiencing what the season felt like when we didn't have AP summer assignments, basketball tournaments, high school drama or absurd amounts of packing to do would have been the dream. Now, sitting at my kitchen table eating leftovers from dinner out with my parents, I am realizing that college summers are not quite what we thought they would be. We're all broke, we miss our friends and we don't really want to do anything but catch up on Netflix and eat. If you're anything like me, you are all of these things, but without a car. This is obviously the worst fate any suburbanite can imagine.
The true college summer day looks like this: instead of staying up all night, going downtown and plunging into lakes on rope swings, I get up at 5:30 a.m., go to work in my mom's minivan, come home at 7:00 p.m., work out, eat dinner, watch Jeopardy, and go to bed. I write a little if I'm lucky. I work ten hours a day renting people cars so they can go on the vacations I wish I was going on. There's nothing I would rather be doing than going on week long road trips and adventuring about carefree. The reality is, I have to work so I can pay for my education and get myself to the place I want to be further down the road. If that means compromising my now for my future, so be it. But, that doesn't mean I have to like it.
The weekends are almost as bleak. Though there are plenty of places to go, things to do and people to see, I tend to decline any offers that meander my way. This may not be true for everyone, but I don't really have the urge to hang out with the majority of the people I went to high school with. I have my few close friends who I kept in touch with throughout freshman year, but if you're not one of those people, there is a strong chance I saw you in public and avoided you. So instead of having huge, all-inclusive, drama-free parties with my old classmates, I hang out and watch Netflix with my best friends. But since all of us work different schedules, I mostly sit around Snapchatting my school friends and wishing I was hanging out with them instead of with my new pals, Toyota Camry and Nissan Altima. Even though it's only been a year, your friends from school seem much more like family than anything else. They are the ones who take care of you when you're sick, bring you your favorite things when you're sad, talk you through rough days and celebrate the great ones right by your side. They are the only people I can imagine going back to in the fall.
Get ready Class of 2015. Get ready to have the best and last summer of your high school life with your high schools friends. And then get ready to begin the best four years you can imagine. If you do it right, college will change you to your core. It won't be easy. You'll learn about who you truly are; as a student, as a friend, and an independent individual. You will become more of yourself than you've ever been. You'll find your forever friends and together you will make memories that will become the stories you tell your children and your grandchildren. But also get ready for the shattering crash down to reality when you have to pack up and come home next spring. I know this summer will be dreadfully long and boring and severely lacking in late night pizza and binge drinking, and if distance makes the heart grow fonder, I'll be worshipping every square inch of American's campus by the fall. But I know in the end I am lucky to have found a place to miss, and I hope that this time next year, you've found it too.
