Don’t waste your summer

After slamming down those pencils, nurturing those hand cramps and shoving as many clothes as you can into your suitcases to go home, a weight has been lifted as you step out of the dark, bleak Winter semester and dive head first into summer break.

Everything about summer is appealing: your commitments to the library are shortened, you don’t have to check your school email only to see it filled with that idiot who has still not read the syllabus and we do not have to layer ourselves in clothes. Your parents’ fridges are easily available and there’s nothing more exciting than planning those BBQ parties.

Another year is under your belt and you can kiss those courses goodbye. For that, raise your hand and give yourself a pat on the back for making it out (barely) alive.

Your brain has manipulated you into thinking that for the next four months, you are on a vacation. The summer is meant to be spent wearing as little clothes as possible, rotating between different cottages, and if the bar you go to has a patio — you’ll be there.

Unfortunately with the increasing difficulty that exists for people looking for jobs; young adults fresh out of university struggle to get themselves financially secured. Maybe you should reconsider your “break” time and see the summer as the perfect opportunity to gain resources for networking that will help shape your future.

Summer is one of the most valuable times to get ahead and start shaping your future. It gives you a first-hand experience into what will be your fast-approaching future: The real world. Whether you want to face that reality or not, the real world is just around the corner and how you manage your summer could be a determining factor of how your experience in the real world turns out.

That is where the concept of balance comes into play. You have to utilize it during school when it comes to keeping yourself healthy, committed to academic goals and making sure you maintain a decent social life.

Whether you are an arts, business or science major when you go to university, we all learn the same thing: balance. Summer should not be a writeoff from maintaining this balance; in fact, balance should be enforced more than ever.

Once you graduate, it’s done and you’re out there using the skills you have managed to pick up to guarantee you can feed, clean and take care of yourself.
Although academia is valuable and beneficial and anyone attending university is extremely lucky, you owe it to yourself to plan ahead and market yourself out there this summer to gain those resources.

This whole pep-talk column may be the last piece of information you want to read. But from one peer to another, the commitment and investment that you put into your summers could make the next three months a prologue for our rapidly approaching real worlds.

Therefore, I propose a challenge this summer: Have the most successful summer you could possibly have. That seems similar to having “the best” summer you could have and it could very much pan out to be the best, if managed wisely.

Festivals, dinners on patios and cottage weekends are out there waiting, but at the same time, investing your days into making sure you work hard, even if it’s at an internship that could be dull and tedious, should be number one.

To those who are currently unemployed, get back out there and keep trying. Easier said than done, but whatever opportunities you get, take them. Hopefully this will give you skills that will enable you to be pro-active in seeking out jobs that will cater to the fields you are interested in.

Now, enough with the lectures. There are beers to drink, patios to sit on and burgers to be flipped.

All that and a full-time, crappy-paying summer job may be the best kind of balance you will experience, before you find yourself back pulling all-nighters in the Concourse.