How to successfully live your Summer?

The Samohi Staff2012-2013You awake to an incredibly sunny afternoon. You stumble downstairs for some OJ, rubbing your eyes vigorously. After spending some quality time stalking your friends on Instagram and Facebook, you sprawl on the couch to play Call of Duty for the remaining hours of the day. You figure, “It’s summer, why should I do anything?”Yes, summer may seem like solid excuse to do nothing. The long school year is behind you, and you deserve to be rewarded after nine months of nonstop stress. However, there is a fine line between relaxing and wasting your time.In reality, summer was never intended to be a time to “do nothing.” The vacation was invented so that children in rural areas could help with the harvest season, when their families needed help on the farm. The harvest season was about as physically straining as school is mentally and didn’t afford much time-wasting. That is not to say you should head off to the Midwest in hopes of learning agriculture, but you should take advantage of these beautiful two months to learn something new.People often refer to summer by its two different extremes: incredibly lazy or incredibly high strung. If you lay out by the pool all day, you’re not going to look so hot on college applications, and if you’re working nine to six at a law office you’re going to enjoy your summer. However, there is a middle ground. You should strive to organize your summer so that you have time to rest and get involved with something worthwhile.There’s travel. Submerging yourself into a different culture will have lots of rewards, from picking up at least parts of a new language to learning how to cook unique foods. There’s work. Maybe you should try to take it a step higher than the babysitting you’ve been doing since you were nine, but regardless you’d make a good deal of money and learn responsibility. There’s interning. You may not make any money and you’ll be making a lot of coffee and copies, but exposing yourself to a field you are interested in is as worthwhile as getting a paycheck. And finally there’s community service. Doing something good for the world will make you feel good as well.In the end, summer is summer. You’ll enjoy it any way you decide to spend or waste it. But as you frantically fill out your college applications in the fall of senior year, don’t blame anyone but yourself when your lazy pool days don’t come in handy.eic@thesamohi.com