Sara Merican | Don't forget to have a summer

The sun is high in the sky, shining. The crisp, winter air grips your face and fingers. Locust Walk is a flurry of activity. Your favorite song is playing through your earphones. You suddenly spot a friend. You exchange greetings. “How are you?” Great, thank you. “How was your week?” More pleasantries ensue. Then, she drops the bomb: 

“What are you doing this summer?”

Ah, March. The month of What-Are-You-Doing-This-Summer madness. Resumes have been written; cold emails have been sent. The circus of cover letters, aggressive LinkedIn stalking, applications, and interviews is finally in full swing. Behold, the agonizing wait. Behold, the heartbreak. 

In a school as pre-professional as Penn, summer internships feel like a make-or-break deal. While I agree it is important to fill the summer with one “big” thing like an internship, research position, major personal project, or summer class, we should be careful not to pack our summer to its brim. Leave a few weeks of your summer to rest, resurrect an old hobby, and spend time with family and friends. Be present.

You don’t have to get that “big name” internship. You don’t have to be in New York. You also don’t have to be in Los Angeles. You really don’t have to do two internships. You don’t have to fill every week. You don’t have to always be doing “something.” Summer isn’t a competition. 

Take a step back. Breathe. 

I think back to my freshman summer. Yes, I enrolled in a summer class. I went abroad through the Penn in Cannes program. I watched 30 films in two weeks there. I wrote two papers. Yes, I joined a program in Israel — an intensive, packed eight days learning about Israel’s history, politics, religions, and culture.

In sharp comparison, when I finally returned home to Singapore, I was suddenly confronted by empty days and calendars. I learned to be comfortable with that. I took the time to look inward, reflect, and recharge.

I decided to wipe off the dust on my guitar, only to discover that half of its strings were broken. After getting it fixed, I vowed to (finally) venture from the safe shores of the G-C-Em-D progression. The guitar groaned back to life. I learned new chords. I learned new strumming patterns. I watched YouTube tutorials on my favorite songs, before proceeding to deafen my family with my impassioned, off-tune crooning and violent thumping on the guitar. 

I rejoined my club soccer team, played in the local women’s league, and experienced the joys of training and competing again. I had sorely missed the exhilaration of victory and the rawness of loss that the sport gives. 

Out of curiosity, I fiddled around with some HTML course on Codecademy, just to see what all the “coding” fuss on campus was about. My painfully scant webpage on “brown bears” that the course guided me to create stared pitifully back at me. Cute. 

I reconnected with old friends, most of whom I had not seen in a year. Many were going through big changes in their lives: last years of school, first jobs, first children, new relationships, engagements, and marriages. We shared our anxieties about “growing up”; yet there was a sense of peace and solidarity that we were going through the different phases of life together. 

I spent long, lazy afternoons at my grandmother’s house, watching re-runs of Hong Kong TV soap operas, and was reminded of what TV looked like before high definition was a thing. In the familiar, humid air, seasoned by the heavenly smells of my grandmother’s cooking wafting from the kitchen, I indulged in the nostalgia and memories of a golden, far-too-short childhood. 

Summer can be a time to work toward our future and explore the ever-expanding world of possibilities before us. However, it is also a time to reconnect with our past and appreciate our present. Let’s not forget that this can be fulfilling and meaningful too.

SARA MERICAN is a College sophomore from Singapore, studying English and cinema studies. Her email address is smerican@sas.upenn.edu.