Well ya’ll, it looks like it’s happening. School is almost out, and once again, most of us are all but moving into the campus libraries to bang our heads against our laptops—or whatever it is we do there. As the deadlines come rolling in, some of us will graduate, while some are relieved to have made it through freshman year and some are just excited to have more free time to drink beer. As I look to my summer plans and try, as I do every year, to make this the best summer of my life, I once again find myself making plans I probably won’t keep.
Every year, I’m like, “Oh yes, I’ll have time to read my favorite professor’s dissertation. Then cry.” Or, “Gosh, I just cannot wait to finally try all of those refreshing, quinoa-filled, berry-infused summertime antioxidant recipes. What a healthy cook I will become.” Or my favorite, “I will finally become the runner society is pressuring me to be. I will buy more stretchy clothes in bright colors, which will look amazing against my beautifully even summer tan. I will glide like a frickin’ gazelle as I effortlessly propel myself around the shores of Lake Mendota each new summer morning.” And there’s always this: “I will have a 30-hour a week job, where my coworkers are funny, but not racist or homophobic. I will never work weekends, and I’ll have so much money I will just start paying off my student loans. You know what, my friends’ loans too. I will have so much money and time to buy pitchers of the finest summer beer for all of my friends on the Terrace. Like four times a week. I will endlessly pat myself on the back.”
Of course, as I write this, I still believe I’ll do these things. Why? Because I have, like, goals and stuff. And these are things adults do, which I have to start practicing if I’m going to be any good at adultness. Of course, there are like 10 days out of the whole summer when I actually do these things. When it happens, I’ll feel so accomplished and sleep like a tired puppy lulled me to sleep by the summer breeze. But, if you’re anything like me, when I wake up with nothing to do on a 98-degree day in a house with no air conditioning, these things become a challenge.
When it’s so hot outside you can’t imagine what you might do when you get out there but die immediately, there are a lot of incentives to stay inside. I mean there’s probably cereal, which you can easily eat for every meal, Netflix and ice. Oh, also a bed. Plus you’re already lethargic, even though you’ve just gotten a full night’s sleep because the heat is weighing you down and you feel like a whiny toddler who doesn’t know what they want. After a season or two of “Mad Men” (which you don’t think is as good as everyone thinks, but you’re watching the whole series on Netflix because why not), you start to feel guilty about not being outside. It’s like, summer and stuff, you should be eating Summer Shandy-soaked quinoa as you run 15 miles around the lake, which you forgot you can’t swim in because the blue green algae will infect your lungs and you’ll die.
So, this summer I’m hoping not to watch another season of a crappy TV show and to eat less cereal and buy a sports bra. These are moderate goals, but hey, it’s summer. Do I really need goals?
How much cereal will you eat this summer? Tell Jacklin at jacklin.bolduan@gmail.com.
