I’m already well into my second week of summer, and I’m already beginning to fear the annual threat of the summer doldrums. This is no way a reference to the weather—I could think of nothing better at the moment than still, warm weather, the sun unimpeded by a cloudless sky. After the initial flirtation by the Tacoma weather last week—which was absolutely gorgeous, for those of you who fled immediately after your Finals were finished—we have eased back into the mediocre overcast that typically plagues the Northwest until well into June.
Anyways, before I digress too deeply into complaints about the weather, let me make it more clear what I mean by “summer doldrums.” I feel as if each student begins to paint their ideal summer as soon as the second semester begins, with ambitious plans and unrealistic images filling their three-and-a-half months off of school. Read countless novels, take many trips with friends, workout every day, fill-in-the-blank-with-something-you’ve-been-longing-to-do-but-haven’t-had-time-for-during-the-year, etc.
Then summer arrives, and our well-honed schedule-juggling abilities soften without the pressure of tests, papers and work assignments. We sleep in. We go home and get pampered. We get jobs. And before we know it, we’re buying books and packing our bags for another year of school. The summer doldrums are sneaky, too—we normally don’t realize them until after they’ve wreaked havoc on our ambitions.
Some would argue that the summer doldrums are therapeutic for us, that they help us recover from the daily grind that Puget Sound so generously offers us. Some would claim that we need to embrace their presence and accept them as an integral part of the college experience. Some would even go so far as to expand them, to make them as much as part of our summer as we can (that last “some” are probably the ones watching cartoons on their parents’ couches all day long eating food they surely didn’t cook for themselves).
I, however, am going to try and fend them off as much as possible. Though I’ll probably fail, I want to schedule my weeks beforehand, generate to-do lists that I use during the school year, and actually make some valuable use of my free time. Of course, I still have to work and take care of the usual responsibilities of ASUPS. And I still will sleep an hour or two longer than I was able to during the school year. And I won’t hesitate to lay out in the sun if it happens to escape the clouds for more than a few minutes.
But when I’m stretched out in the sun, you can be sure that I’ll be trying to finish a novel. Emphasize “trying.”
Bring on the doldrums.