On taking a break

The year is wrapping up for nearly everyone. It was hard, there were long sleepless nights and stress and freak-outs. But you’ve finished. For some, you’re about to graduate and start the next step of the journey. Others are happy to have completed the year and are one step closer to graduation (the horror).

The thing is, you’ve got a few months ahead of you to rest and replenish your energy for the next year.

While I’ve outlined what you should do during your senior, junior, and underclassmen summers, there is one thing that is vital to everyone’s success: Take a break.

I know. We’re all perfectionist workaholics who are attending 10 skilled programs, doing independent research, and building houses in Africa for a week. But there are limits to what the mind can take, and we need to appreciate them.

Being a teenager has a lot of benefits, and one of them is that, to some extent, you’re expected to seize the day.

So take a day off from work to travel to another state to see a concert. Try a new restaurant every week with your friends. Go to that weird touristy thing in your town and have an awesome time.

Applications are important, but they’re not everything.

You have plenty of time to come up with interesting, thoughtful, interview/essay appropriate stories. But you also need a few crazy ones to share with your friends when you get to school.

That’s not to say you have to do things that make you uncomfortable. But there’s a difference between doing something dangerous and taking a risk. Take a few risks.

Trust me, when I got to school I didn’t tell my new college friends about how much my home friends and I loved to play apples to apples on Saturday nights (we’ve grown up now, we play cards against humanity). I talked about how we sometimes used to dress up in fancy clothes to watch movies. Or that when we went to Disney on a school trip we sang Happy Birthday to everyone with an “It’s my birthday” pin and got rewarded with free candy. Or when my school was doing it’s infamous “road rally” my friends and I went out for ice cream, and then drove around our town blasting show tunes.

Take some time this summer to make some memories with people. Take a break. Have some fun. Treat every summer like it might be your last opportunity to be a kid.

You’ve got time to find things for your applications, but real summer breaks are few and far between.