Although it feels like the season of sunshine and fireworks has only just begun, it’s over before you know it. I’ve always sort of perceived it as a time for wildness, spontaneity, and urgency. But you can only do so much before you have to go back to hitting the books and procrastinating papers. Now that summer is slowly starting to wind down and school is less than a month away, there are at least a few fun things that you can be sure to cross off your bucket list:

1. Finally kiss the cutie you’ve been thinking about all summer.

The sun shouldn’t be the only hot thing this summer. Romance can often be a huge aspect of our lives, and what better chance to pursue it than while you and your potential special someone have all this time off that you could be spending together? If there’s someone you’re interested in and the feelings are mutual, but no one has made a move yet, take initiative and go for it. Courage is an important thing to pluck up not just in preparation for the upcoming semester, school year or next chapter of our lives, but for every day that we’re here.

2. Buy a last-minute spontaneous airplane ticket for that flight you’ve been wanting to catch.

Another thing is that wanderlust you’ve been suppressing. I don’t know what it is about the time right before school starts back up again, but in that short interval, all I can feel is the deluge of this strong desire to travel and trek on whatever adventure is out there. I want to be on a continent I’ve never been in before. Hell, I’d even settle for another state. Go, even if it is your neighboring state. There are things you’ve never seen before and people you’ve never met before and experiences that college has never taught and may never teach you. You don’t have an entire lifetime to be impulsive but you do have some time off between the really critical stages within that lifetime; use it wisely.

(P.S.- Isn't this GIF amazing?)

3. Teach yourself a new recipe.

You’ve been complaining all year that you don’t have the time to bake anymore. Before the school year begins, whip out the old cookbook and get yourself to prepare a meal you’ve never even heard of before with ingredients you’ve never experimented with in the kitchen. You know you won’t be able to once you’re consumed with midterms and coffee runs, so do yourself a favor and get it out of the way. Make it for all of your friends and family when they’re in town, and impress them with your skills and maybe even your newfound gift. At least August won’t have been a completely lazy month and total waste.

4. Get that paper.

Need I say more?!

5. Dance. Dance a lot.

This one was inspired by my sister, Nahyian, who made me play “Signs” by Drake a million times one summer night so we could sing and dance to it. The most important thing to do before we go back to school this year is to hold on to our youth and remember that even though we’re getting older, we’re still young, which we won’t be forever. There is something beautiful about the wisdom we gain as we age, but there is also something beautiful about the restlessness and whimsicality of our adolescence. We should enjoy it, because it’s gone pretty fast. We shouldn’t be afraid to dance in front of others or sing in front of others or do what we love doing in front of others. The day will come when we have to grow up completely and we’ll forget what it’s like to bust moves in our mirrors until our feet hurt, but today is not that day. Every single fleeting moment should be seized, captured, savored while it’s still new. The prospects of our futures, no matter how daunting they may be, shouldn’t stir us into a prodigious fear of what will happen in the now. Be assured that that’s what your time in school is for, to work hard, and if you do that, everything will work out in the end. But give yourself the time to unwind, to catch up with yourself, to do things you forgot you loved doing. You deserve that much after going back to do it all again.

We often worry too much about what the future holds, and with all due respect, we should. But we shouldn’t sell ourselves short of all the riches we are worthy of holding in the present. Going back to school can bring upon a whole assortment of mixed emotions and nostalgia, but know that you’re doing it so that eventually you can live a life full of the excitement you get when you’re not there once you get everything you could ever need.