Summer in college is a lot different than a high school summer. In high school, you wait until the end of the year and then celebrate with pool parties and bonfires on the beach with your best friends.
Summers home from college are a major disappointment in comparison. Yeah, you’re happy when finals are FINALLY over and you made it out alive, but then you realize it’s actually over. You have to worry about moving all of your crap back home again. You have to leave the people you just spent a year getting so close to. You lived with these people for about 180 days and now you just have to pack up and leave them.
The distance and the separation of summer can have a silver lining.
While leaving all your friends at college can be difficult, summer is a time for growth. This is why you should embrace college summers and everything that comes with them.
Summer is for perspective.
It’s there so you can take a break and look back over the year you just had. It’s so you can look back at the ups and downs of the friendships you created and see all the late night adventures that you had just kind of become accustom to. It’s so you can travel and see the world. Summer allows you the opportunity to look at the world differently.
Summer is for getting out of the bubble.
While you’re at school, you typically tend to focus on the events unfolding before your eyes; from drama with friends to various events around campus. I call it the college bubble. Summer breaks that focus and pops the bubble. You go back into the big scary world that you used to live in everyday and redirect your focus back to the world outside of school.
Summer is for distance.
When you’re around someone 24/7 you become extremely close to them. Then summer happens and you could be thousands of miles away from them. Some could even be oceans away. The distance lets you know who you really miss and who really misses you. As they always say, distance makes the heart grow fonder.
Summer is for a vacation.
If nothing else, it’s a vacation from the place where you just spent a whole year. Who doesn’t like an occasional change of scenery? You go back to your old town or maybe someplace totally new. Either way it’s something different. It’s also a vacation from people. Yeah you love everyone at college to death, but you NEED time away from them even if you don’t want it so that you can keep growing into the person you are meant to be. Think of it like taking a break when you’re dating someone. You still love them but you just need space to be your own person. Summer gives you this space weather you asked for it or not.
Summer is for change.
Yes change is scary, but it happens everyday so you should probably just get use to it. Relationships dynamics change. Friendship dynamics change. Most of all, people change. You change. You grow. You find out who you are more and more and the summer is no different. You just find out who you are with different people. And that’s okay. It makes you purer.
Summertime is a lot of different things for a lot of different people. For some it’s a time to chill out and not have to constantly worry about the next test, others it’s a time to work their butts off at the amazing internship they scored. One thing everyone’s summer has in common though is that no matter what, it’s a time of growth and change and that’s probably the best part.
Featured image via Katie Drazdauskaite on Unsplash
