GUEST COLUMNIST: Lazy days of summer

Summer isn't supposed to be like this,right?

I'm 20 years old. I'm a Whartonite. I'm even from Long Island. So would somebody -- anybody -- please tell me why my days and nights aren't being spent raking in the bucks somewhere down in the Financial District? Or why my spirit of adventure has yet to take me to the capitals of Europe or to an isolated third-world village?After all, isn't that what everyone else is doing?

Every week, like hundreds -- thousands -- of Penn students across the land, I turn on my exceedingly slow home computer and gaze at the online version of this very page. And every week I learn more and more about the wild adventures undertaken by some of my very own classmates.

The stories are varied, unique and paint a picture of a Penn community that, whether reinventing the global economy or traveling the world on missions of humanity, has branched out from this small slice of West Philadelphia to influence affairs at every corner of the globe.

As impressed as I am, though, I can't help but feeling bad. For as my friends and classmates keeping working hard and saving the world, I fear I'm having just too much fun with my summer.

Instead of improving my transcript with summer classes or perfecting my Spanish with some study abroad, I spend my evenings in a humid, overcrowded press box, hovering over stodgy sportswriters and praying that maybe, just maybe, this will be the day that a foul ball finally comes my way.

Yes, I work for a baseball team. "Work," of course, meaning internship. And "internship," more accurately, meaning doing just about anything my boss wants it to mean, as long as it's unpaid.

At first, the idea of spending a summer out at the ballpark seemed almost surreal. I dreamed of the perks to surely come my way. I would soon be taking batting practice with the guys when things were slow. Last night's starting pitcher and I would go drinking after games. And road trips? No problem. Sign me up for the St. Louis, San Diego, Los Angeles swing. I'm an organization man now.

This was baseball, after all, our national pastime. The summer, I dreamed, was going to be my release from the horrors of exams into the serenity of bats and balls, fathers and sons, doubleheaders and just about anything else Bob Costas could possibly work into a drippy metaphor.

But then I learned. Baseball teams have Xerox machines. And deadlines. And drab, windowless offices. Even -- gasp! -- staff members who don't care all too much about whether or not we beat Cincinnati last night.

And that began to get to me. Would my summer of hope be shattered amidst the reality of real work? I wasn't out there reinventing society like it seemed so many of my friends were... so would I at least get to enjoy a game or two along the way?

Before I could think about it, though, my attentions were diverted to the tasks at hand. As I sat in my now-regular seat, struggling to get some work done on an obsolete laptop, I found myself getting wrapped up in all there was to be done.

It was the work I had dreaded, but I was enjoying it.

And before I knew it, my doubts turned into nothing more than a not-so-unpleasant routine. In some strange way, the responsibilities and expectations I had once feared suddenly paled when I took a look around and realized what surrounded me.

There were players, fans and excitement. A pennant race. Everything I had seen on television, in old yearbooks and in grainy films from years past, was right there before me.

There I was, lifetime Little League batting average .215, running around a Major League clubhouse, grabbing quotes for the day's recap notes. Running around, working hard, but doing it all quite happily.

And that, it seems, is all I could possibly ask for. My only hope is that all of my friends out there saving the world, clocking in for 80-hour weeks on Wall Street or sweating out the heat of a foreign land, are enjoying their summers as much as I am.

Tomorrow I'll get back in the car and drive back to the ballpark. I'll take my seat in the pressbox, go a little crazy when all isn't done by game time, and take some great comfort in knowing that it is possible to enjoy your work.

Maybe summer is supposed to be like this. And maybe today that foul ball will finally find its way to me.

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