Finals week! AH, so much to study, so much to review, so much to write down. The frenzy is ubiquitous with the college experience, and if you beg to differ, go anywhere on social media right now and I guarantee you’ll find something to prove my point. We’re going insane right now. And when we’re sitting here either trying to alleviate a headache or procrastinating our studying, we think to the summer.

It’s so tantalizingly close, you can almost taste the salt water on the beach, feel the warm aura of the sun on our skin, and the crisp nighttime air on our long adventures. The time is so close that it makes concentrating on these final papers so difficult. But things have changed since the last near summer experience. Last time I was thinking that that’s going to be my last summer in high school, thinking that I had to take the time to spend times with my friends because I won’t know how close I might be next time around. This kind of thinking lead to a really nice summer that I enjoyed alongside with all the friends of the past 4 years. I got the most I could out of it and now that I’m faced with another summer, things feel a little different.

Again I’ve got a job, this one more constant than last year and it’s going to restrict the plans of the season plenty. Now it’s not just ‘lemme get up whenever I want to and see what I’ll do today’ kind of thinking. Things have become more complicated than that and at this rate, it’ll be a few more years where I’ll be lucky to have much of a summer break at all. It’ll just become another season to live through. All grim prognostication aside, I’ve found that this summer is going to be unique in that it feels like a reunion, of sorts. I’ve been a bit slow to make the new college friends that people say will last for a lifetime since my closest friends from college are people I knew beforehand. In that sense, this summer will be a bringing back of the friends I’ve loved for a couple years.

I’m sure some of them won’t really care much to meet with me or be tied down much at all to high school. The thought of it is a shame but I guess everyone has their way of moving on. But the summer holds so many opportunities to try things I’ve never done before with these friends. I’ve got a working knowledge of NYC Subway service now, I have a general idea how to be by myself now.

All these new revelations will make this the most exciting summer to date, in my opinion. Here’s to hoping it all goes well.