As we prepare to bring closure to yet another school year, students’ minds are filled with visions of lazy days at the pool, backyard cookouts and graduation parties.
For high school students, summer is the much needed and coveted hiatus from the daily grind.
After seemingly endless months of homework and hitting the snooze button, it is understandably tempting to be unproductive during the summer months.
But as we mature, it is vital to recognize that summer can be just as productive as a school year.
While the school year is generally a time of constant motion, inevitable busy schedules and dictated lives, summer is the season of independence.
However, it is important not to confuse independence with laziness. These summer months should be utilized to their fullest potential.
While during the school year we are academically productive, we should take the summer months to be just as productive, but in a different way.
As Daniel Pink said, we should learn to find play, meaning and symphony as a language in our everyday lives. In other words, balance is key.
Allow yourself to find the balance that so many mature adults swear by. Finding equilibrium in our daily lives causes us to feel a new sense of purpose.
In Bexley, teachers and parents alike place a great deal of focus on polishing transcripts and maximizing our appeal to colleges.
While preparing for our futures may be in the forefront of our minds and the minds of those around us, it is of the utmost importance to remember that, at the end of the day, we are not defined by words on a transcript.
There are more important things in life and this summer we should all challenge ourselves to break the mold.
This is our call to action: find something that intrigues you and do it.
Become motivated by a genuine desire to better yourself or better the world around you; never because you feel obligated or because you think it “looks good” to colleges.
Once you have found your calling, go beyond thinking and talking about it and take the initiative.
Discover what you are interested in and create memorable experiences, for they will define your summers.
Once we have decided to embrace our summer days, it is easy to recognize the unique and rewarding opportunities all around us; travel, volunteer work, art classes, sports camps, music lessons, leadership conferences, summer college programs and the like are available during these months.
Opportunity is not knocking; it’s practically banging down the door.
It is extraordinarily empowering to take hold of the freedom we gain in the summer and accomplish something.
What’s more, seizing these glimpses of independence then translates into how we behave in college and the years after graduation, when we are thrust into a real world full of real experiences.
Those who choose to spend the majority of their vacation days sleeping and watching “America’s Next Top Model” marathons will probably need to spend more time adjusting and deciding how to spend their newly discovered free time.
After one or two fulfilled summers, though, you’ll be ahead of the curve and will have come to know yourself better.
A new skill you learned at camp may transform into one of your greatest passions.
Your college major may be discovered through a class you took for a week in July.
A travel program overseas may become the subject of your college essay.
And in the end, those of us who are still worrying about filling up those daunting white lines on applications will find that we actually have more than enough to write about.
Summer is a time for exploration. In the months ahead, allow yourself to discover, explore and experience.
Published May 2008. Digitized 2025.