America has always reserved a special place for summer. With its sweltering days and warm nights, summer, not too long ago, was the time of year in which a student could divorce himself from responsibilities, reconnect with his inner child and take time for himself. The student had a chance to relax, unwind and enjoy the lack of pressure associated with the rigid confines of academia. The world, instead, became the classroom for three months.
Nevertheless, the American expectation of summer has evolved in tandem with the changing expectations of the high school student. Instead of embracing laid-back summer days, students are confronted with days filled with work and internships. Due to the escalating competition to attend college that is driven by a harsh job market and an extended recession, the American student finds himself hard-pressed to pursue an enterprise that will make him a more competitive candidate.
Internships are a common choice among students, partly because they offer experience and insight into the work ethic required by a professional environment.
Students can extend their interests beyond the confines of the traditional classroom into the real world and explore different professions, all the while supplementing their resumes.
However, the limited number and exclusive nature of such summer opportunities reflects both their highly competitive nature and the significance of personal connections; in any case, many students are left disadvantaged. Furthermore, the true benefits of an internship are often called in to question. Do these experiences help students find meaning, exploit a pool of free labor, or add empty padding to privileged students’ college apps?
The competition surrounding these opportunities themselves raises the question, “exactly how attractive do they make you to colleges?” While college admissions officers do acknowledge the merits of such internships, they should also take into account the fact that most students cannot afford these highly exclusive opportunities. For this reason, colleges cannot justifiably interpret internships as markers of intellectual curiosity. Thus, logic would deem these internships not as beneficial in the admissions process as many believe them to be. Perhaps students would stress less and plan their summers more efficiently if colleges were more transparent in their preferences for summer activities.
Indeed, many students opt to find a job during the summer. But despite their reasons, whether they be financial or career-inspired, students who work during the summer suffer a similar fate of interns: less time for themselves. Other students elect to take courses at summer school.
Regardless what students do over the summer, their rationale behind their choices should come from themselves, not their parents. In keeping with these amplified expectations, parents have applied more and more pressure on their children to fill their summers with resume-boosting activities or simply keep them from playing video games all day. However, there are numerous ways to encourage your children to not slack off. Students should be able to pick their own summers and not have work hoisted upon them by anxious parents.
Furthermore, parents and students alike may be losing sight of the enlightening effects of a summer spent following one’s own agenda. Summer provides us with bountiful opportunities to kindle new interests, forge new friendships, and reconnect with our loved ones. Personal and mental growth is not restricted to the domains of academia, and summer gives us much needed time to foster such growth.
In sum, this worrying trend marks a devolution we do not want to see as an accepted norm. We will not stand idly by as our summers become relics of the past. We do realize that there is little we as students can do to reverse this movement; nevertheless, we urge our peers to remember the merit of a summer untainted by the encroaching influence of college or career aspirations. We should reassess our priorities of summer and appreciate it for what it was meant to be: an opportunity to explore our interests, discover new passions, and essentially enjoy life in whatever way we see best.
So, world–if you expect us to fill our summers with what is essentially an extension of the pressures we face during the school year and in our work, we deserve to not be treated as children anymore. If you expect us to work like adults, treat us like adults. And if you are not quite ready to give us that respect of choice, give us back our summers.
