Summer's End

I’m writing this on a thin border between times. On one side is the three months of summer, and on the other is the four months before winter break and, really, the nine months until I graduate. Believe me, it’s a difference big enough to deserve a border wall, at least when you go to Grinnell. Even though I spent this summer working full-time, most of my time was still my own. Any day of the week I could sit down to do something and get bored or finish it before some task demanded my attention. Time works differently in the school year, less like air and more like food: a commodity, not a given. And right now I’m sitting on a skinny strip of hours between the two periods. I’ve had my first class already, and am still attached enough to the summer not to jump into studying right now. But tomorrow I’ll get a fresh load of homework, and jump right into my school state of mind.

To be clear: I like school. I can’t wait to start on the reading lists, especially since I have two English classes and one Humanities class this semester. People in high school often told me that college would be this sort of constant work, usually in a scared-straight type speech, but so long as you legitimately like what you study, hours of work can be pretty fun. I’m writing this in cubicle #306, my second home for the past three years, and it feels good to settle back into the familiar space and remember all the great novels I read here, novels I probably wouldn’t’ve read (or at least not as well) if I didn’t have a due date to finish them by and a papers to write on them. And what free-time I do get in college is sometimes better for being carefully budgeted. Long dinners with friends or Saturday night Dungeons and Dragons sessions feel all the more special with the contrast between how I spent all the rest of that day.

Of course, it’s easy to say that now, when I’m bored of free time the way I am at the end of every summer. Later on, when I’ve read so much that words will barely stick to my mind and every minute I give to myself feels like a small crime, I know I’ll long for summer. I’ll think that I could accomplish so much, write ten novels and read a library and have so much fun, if I just got to choose how I spent my time. Which is more than a little ironic, given that right now I’m begging for the school year to give me structure and focus and purpose. It’s been like this ever since my first year in college, though I think I can only see the pattern clearly now that I’m in the last quarter.

For over a decade my nuclear family of students and professors lived on the academic calendar, where time starts in September, ends in May, and goes on hiatus from June to August. That era ended when Micah got a year-round job last year, but I’ve gotten so used to academic life that I’m glad I won’t be leaving it any time soon (since I’m trying for a teaching certificate). As wide as the swings are from summer to school and back again, I love how there’s a gasp of fresh air each time you cross the border from one to the other. And there are comforts in each: days spent biking around Edina, following garage sale roadsigns if they appear and intuition at each crosswalk if they don’t, and night when I need two jackets and a hat to walk from my warm, high cubicle in Burling Library to my cozy room, where I’ll dedicate my rare free time to something dumb on Netflix.