Summer by: Joseph O'Such

Ah summer, the pinnacle of student laziness and binge watching the entire Office series twice in a week. Summer is a time of relaxation and stress free. As some people know, the original purpose of an extensive summer break was for the children to head back to their homes and help the summer harvest. This was clearly when most people did indeed farm, something that has changed a lot to this day.

Although summer does clearly hold this calm lazy mindset, by the time high school rolls around, I felt that path of thought increasingly harder to belief. Not only are high school students sometimes bombarded with summer assignments, but also often feel obliged to prepare for college, whether it be via working a job to save up some money, vying to win scholarships, PSAT/SAT prep, summer classes to cram in the ever growing number of AP and other college level classes, the list goes on and on.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty of time to do other wants (for myself at least). Even then, the peskiest thing about summer duties isn’t the working a job, scholarships or even the PSAT/SAT prep classes. It is the summer assignments that proves most annoying. Although in many of my classes, I received no or applicable summer assignments. In my science classes, the past few years we have had to read a singular book, about different topics. One book was about globally impacting substances that changed the world forever, tying together history through a more scientific lens, and was truly an enjoyable and interesting book. 

This was in my mind an example of a good summer assignment. But then were the packets, and whenever you thought you were done, it just kept on going. And the fact that these packets that were supposed to “refresh” our knowledge just inclined us to continuously google until the answer was found, and this would all be done likely the night before that dreaded first day, if it was done at all. That’s not to mention that fact that many students particularly in high school already participate in a variety of different academic activities, which in my mind actually refreshes my memories far better compared to any summer packet.

The point is that the best way to preserve learning throughout the summer is to give minimal enjoyable work and encourage different summer camps and jobs/internships, offering some personal examples, because getting some real world experience and prep early can greatly benefit students later on in college, so that they can pull money and skill learned from those jobs and camps. I’m not sure how many people can feel even a remotely similar thing from camps.