by Elizabeth Reed, online and photography editor
Each year students look forward to summer. School is dragging on by that point, and everyone’s eager for free time–no tasks, no grades, only the outlook of family vacations and endless hours spent watching Netflix.
At this point, the idea of summer has become a broken record. Every summer I sit around the house or hang out with friends at their houses without any real intent of doing something meaningful. And by the end of July I’m eager for school to start so I can start remembering dates again and doing things that have purpose.
Sure, summer is supposed to be a time to relax. It’s our exclusive time as youth to spend all the time we need doing absolutely nothing. We only have a limited amount of summers, though. Mine have gone by in a blur and there are few things I remember about past summers that stick out, and I don’t think it’s because memory loss has come to claim me early.
On the first day of the school year (a.k.a. the most boring and repetitive meet and greet day of the year), new teachers have the same questions: “What did you do over the summer?”, “Would anyone like to share what they did over the summer?”, etc., etc. While some kids share stories about world-wide trips, I take a five second montage of the things that I did over the summer. All of them can be numbered on my hand. 1. Sleep. 2. Watch TV. 3. Hang out with friends. 4. refer back to number one. 5. Repeat.
I’ve convinced myself that I plan on making full use of this summer. I’m done with the R&R part of my break. I’m ready to fill it with personal goals. I’ve created a list of goals that I hope to work towards, and I encourage others who are sick of the same summer routine to do the same.
It doesn’t have to be world wide travel; there are many activities on my list that are simple but I want to do them anyways (learning to hold my breath for three minutes may or may not be one of those activities–I’m at a minute and twenty seconds). Students can do many things in College Station or Bryan, like geocaching or getting a library card to catch up on a book series that school didn’t leave time for. And if you can’t think of anything, be inspired by the people who have created lists online of their summer plans.
Don’t be the kid that gets called on the first day of school with that expected question only to say “umm, Netflix?” Unfortunately, summer doesn’t last forever. The way I see it, I’ve only got a select few summers left, and I plan to make up for wasted time.
