Summer Reset

That first summer break is an odd experience. What kinds of changes have occurred in one’s identity, one’s friendships, and one’s perspective on the world? For the majority of the previous nine months (give or take) the routines, social experiences, and life in school have been the norm and being home has been “special.” While this may feel especially real to those who have “gone away” to school, I am inclined to think that commuter and part‑time students experience a version of this. The person they are building in their academic or apprenticeship settings is a different one than sits at the home dinner table. I would argue that’s true not least because if the student hasn’t “gone” anywhere, chances are people in their lives—who were once a central part of their lives—have, and negotiating those changes is interesting.

Summer break, even if it’s spent in classes or in a job, is the merging of two not‑always‑well‑fitted parts of a life. Different friendship groups raise their own questions: are the high school ones as central as they were? Do the newer college ones feel as essential as they seem to have become? Does being home feel claustrophobic all of a sudden? Are old patterns feeling limiting? How does tackling a year of post‑high‑school sit with one’s identity?

I remember that first summer (so many years ago) as having an oddly mixed set of feelings. There was a certain discomfort in re‑settling at home. Suddenly I wasn’t only scheduling my life around my own priorities, but around my family’s as well. What had I missed at home that my friends who stayed found essential? How did my first‑year experiences stack up against those of friends at other schools? The result was a summer that didn’t quite fit—the small separations that had emerged over the year were still widening, but the shape of whatever new life was coming hadn’t yet come into focus.