Summertime. All year long people tweet how they miss the sun and surf. There’s (typically) no school in the summer, the days are longer, the weather is warmer and the possibilities on how to spend your day are endless — what could be better than that?
Too bad those are the expectations of summer and not the reality. Here are several reasons why summer is overrated.
The beach is lame.
Who really wants to get sand in their shorts? Sand gets in all crevices no matter how hard you try to stop it. The water isn’t super fun to go in because you could step on a rock, fish, crab or the dreaded seaweed. Stepping on any of these is terrible and is bound to happen more than once at your visit to the beach. Sunburns are almost unavoidable. For people like me who get sunburns easily know the importance of putting on sunscreen repeatedly, but it still seems that no matter what you do you will get a sunburn at the beach.
The problem of free time.
There are two sides to this problem. Either you have way too much free time that you have watched every series on Netflix twice and consumed your whole kitchen, or you never have free time because you’re trying to work your butt off this summer and save up money. Relaxation is a wonderful thing in the summer, but too much can be boring, and not enough is stressful. Trying to pick a new show on Netflix is stressful as well, because what if you hate the show, or what if you get too attached to a character and in season two they get killed off? It’s a risk. There’s also the problem that planning time to hang out with your friends seems like mission impossible due to work schedules, vacations and other appointments.
Social media
The first problem with summer social media is that you always expect your Instagram and blogs to be hot with the tubular summer trends when in reality it’s pretty hard to keep up the summer aesthetic. The second problem is when you're bored at home and you start to scroll online only to see that your friends just went on a cruise, or your cousin went to some rad concert.
Human contact when you’re sweaty is the worst.
Getting hugs from friends or family when you’re overheating from the blazing sun seems like some new torture scheme. Cuddling with your significant other is terrible too. Like don’t touch me I’m sweaty, gross and cranky, but also don’t roll away, I love you.
Traffic in the summer is awful.
Besides traffic being bad all year anyway, in the summer it’s rough. If you’re in the sun long enough you can get weird tans or sunburns from the sun shining in through the windows. When you first get in your car, it feels like an oven even if you put it in the shade. If you don’t have air conditioning in your car, that means driving anywhere is a pain.
The bugs
In the summertime, it feels like the bugs are out to get you personally. Yes, you can put on bug spray or just not go outside. Even with the most bug spray, they still seem to get to you. Nothing ruins a cookout more than screaming at the top of your lungs because a bug touched you — I may know that from experience.
The heat and humidity
The humidity is gross. It makes you feel sticky and your hair frizzy or like you came out of "The Lion King." The heat gives us embarrassing sweat marks and the dreaded under-boob sweat. Not to forget that you can get sun stroke and heat stroke. That's a bit on the scary side.