Summer Fun?
Imagine this, it’s a Sunday night, the middle of summer, with no school tomorrow. You’re at the park watching a baseball game as the sun begins to fall west. You take a bite out of your hotdog, and you spill a little mustard on your leg. You don’t care. No bedtime. No parents. No homework. No teachers. Nothing but you, a few buddies, and America’s greatest pastime. The game ends, and your team won; time to go celebrate. Finally, you slump into bed around 2:00 a.m. You wake up and do the same thing the next day, or not. That’s what summer should be.
In the competitive world now, we unfortunately lose our time fast. Sure, back when our parents were our age, summers were filled with playing time, or just straight hanging out. But now we need an edge. We need to spice up our resume. So instead of playing catch in the park, we’re taking classes in Qatar, getting coffee for workers at a law firm, volunteering in Costa Rica. Even working at a camp isn’t good enough now. Our future employers want us to have leadership qualities, yet at the same time, we’re supposed to be able and sit back and take orders. We’re supposed to know everything, yet at the same time, we’re supposed to listen to the person training us, who’s been working there for maybe two weeks. We’re supposed to build ourselves up in college, just to start back at the bottom of the totem pole at some minimum-wage-paying entry position.
We spend four years of our lives preparing. Preparing for what? Everything we really, truly need to know, we should have already learned by the time we get to college. There are going to be people that don’t like you. There are going to be people who think they are better than everyone else. There are going to be people who annoy you. But we have to tolerate them. Yeah, I think we can figure that out before graduation. Sharing, learned that in kindergarten. We also learned that you can’t just hit people, and how to stand in a line. All our lives we’ve been taught not to speak out of turn. At three we learn about apologizing. By 18, you should have been to at least one funeral (pets count). In high school, if not in middle school, you realize that you can’t beat the system, so you have to play the game. There’s always room for improvement. Someone is always going to be better than you, and someone is always going to be worse. Did I miss anything?
So what is it that you want from us, corporate America? Baby boomers are saying that our generation is entitled because we don’t want to work in retail or at a fast food place during the summer. You say you want us to learn hard work, and how to manage on a small salary. Is that not what we’re doing? This summer I will be working for a collegiate baseball team. For money? For college credit? No, for experience, and it’ll look great on the piece of paper that my future employee will spend a mere 6 seconds looking at. And it’s even worse for those still in grade school. I can’t imagine what they’ll be doing to prepare for the real world. With what little time you have left, enjoy it! Don’t take an extra job; don’t take summer school. Take a break!