Wow! The summer of 2010 is just about in the history books as a done deal. What have we accomplished? I always ask this question as a new school year approaches. I seem to forget that for some of us, the previous school year never ended. If one came back to campus to take summer classes, much of what others considered “summer break” was little more than business as usual.
Come to think of it, a summer living in co-ops, taking an internship or working a job at Home Depot puts a damper on what we once thought of as “school’s out forever” — or at least until it started again in the fall. As little kids we craved the moment when, as in “High School Musical,” the kids watched the clock as it ticked toward freedom; freedom from school until September loomed again.
As I think of summer, I guess I enjoyed my time out in the yard, sitting on the beach, riding my bicycle or wearing as little as possible to survive the heat. It was a time to put aside business as usual and do things quieter (or noisier), less crazy (or more crazy) than the usual stuff we do during the “regular” season.
But then I got to thinking: Is summer the most fantastic time of our life or is it a necessary moment in our existence where we are refreshed for a short period of time in order to plow ahead during the other periods in our lives? I wonder how we would survive with endless summers. Endless times to do absolutely nothing except “stuff.” Would that stuff start to wear on us and make us desire going back to some kind of regimen that puts both structure and purpose in our lives?
After talking to a few high school and middle school students, I found they were ready for school to begin. They talked about seeing friends they have missed all summer or playing organized sports or participating in a variety of extracurricular activities. They have changed from the clock watchers who desire to get out of school, to equally focused clock watchers who want school to begin. They have been refreshed and rejuvenated and want to return to a “normal” routine.
Even at my age, 30 (a lot), and ticking down, I still look forward to returning to a schedule. We have been off since the first weeks of May, but during that time I have been involved with a whole raft of activities, some planned and some because, as one person told me, “You must have nothing to do!” Right! I look forward to the fall when people know I have something to do, as if summer were any different.
At some point in our human existence, some brilliant person must have realized we couldn’t exist without some form of downtime. We needed weekends off, a vacation here or there and, as children, summers with no daily planned activities. Life needed to be divided between rigorous work and relaxation. Some people forget summers are a wonderful time of the year, but too much of a good thing can be detrimental to our health. We need a steady diet of both unscheduled activities and a routine that keeps us producing.
For some, maybe the summer of 2010 has been one drunken blur, or perhaps it has been a long set of hours on the job. Whatever it has been, it was needed time away from the “normal” time. It has purged the system of the class with the horrible instructor or vicious TA and washed away memories of the guy or girl in the second row who always talked under his or her breath about how someone else looked. It was precious time to heal from the psychological wounds of a roommate — never to be lived with again — who snored so loud he broke windows.
No matter what has gone on this summer, we are ready to come walking in with our new blue jeans and our fresh polos and start anew in the fall of 2010. Summer is gone. Now it is the start of fall, time to prepare for summer 2011.
Craig Gunn is a State News guest columnist. Reach him at gunn@egr.msu.edu.
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