What ever happened to the summer vacations of our youth? They were a time to relax at your neighbor’s pool, eat hotdogs from the grill and possibly score some treats from the ice cream truck before it was time to go home.
Those days are long gone, and instead of swimming in the pool, we are life-guarding at the pool. Instead of eating the grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, we are the ones serving them to ungrateful kids. Why such a sudden change?
Don’t get me wrong; I love the fact that I am rolling in cash because I worked two jobs this summer, but what used to be the exception seems to have become the rule.
Working somewhere during the summer used to be a way to make a few bucks to conversely spend on having fun with friends. Now we are working to pay credit card bills and car insurance. Where exactly is the fun in that?
Internships have become popular as of late but, honestly, are they really so great? We get to do the work that no one else in the office wants to do and are told that it is a “valuable
experience.”
For the most part, an intern gets the privilege to work for free for eight hours a day. On top of that, most of my friends who have had internships ended up working a job during the nights this summer just so that they could have money to survive.
The last thing I want to do is come across as a slacker here, because that’s not the case. I just have a romanticized view of how summer should be, and every year that my friends and I get older, I realize that the times are a changin’.
Gone are the days of going down to the park and playing baseball in the afternoons. Now I spend my afternoons thinking about what I am going to do with the two free hours I have until it is time to go to the next job or about how I can scam the company out of an extra five minutes for my lunch break.
If it were up to me, summer would be treated like an extended version of the Sabbath.
Only necessary work should be done during those precious three months. It may sound ludicrous or lazy, but summer means a lot to me and I am sure it means a lot to you, the reader, as well.
Unless you plan on becoming a teacher, post-collegiate summers will be spent cramped up in an office somewhere from 9-to-5. These are the last free years of our lives, yet we are rushing into the working world without even knowing it.
I want to make it clear that I am not against the idea of working during the summer. I am just against the inevitable change that is taking place in all of our lives.
I have two more years left of freedom before I am thrust into the working world and it is just now dawning on me. Every passing summer seems to be a more accurate representation
of our personal lives. They start off fun and care-free but, as the years pass, more and more responsibility is left on our shoulders.
Summer should be a time of relaxation and fun. While many can argue that college is merely an extended version of summer, I wholeheartedly disagree. Keep these ideas in your heads when you are filling out applications for jobs and internships. A relaxing summer is a rare commodity and it pains me to see it go to waste.
John Lamb can be reached at
john.lamb@temple.edu.
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