Final exams have concluded, summer goodbyes have been exchanged, and you have somehow endured all of your gruesome move-out and check-out procedures. Congratulations! Next on your agenda comes your summer break, the prized period of time you've probably been wishing for since before you even returned for your spring semester.

If you've made it this far, you probably remember recounting your summertime adventures to your grade school teacher on the first day of school. The teacher would ask their students to, on some platform or another, depict what they had done over summer vacation. Don't lie, you know you tried to make your description sound like the coolest one in the room.

Nowadays, high school and college students often hold high optimism with regards to their summer plans. But when their reality doesn't match their undoubtedly unrealistic expectations for the best summer ever, they return to school in the fall full of disappointment, feeling as though they wasted valuable time to live it up and enjoy their young adult lives.

I'm stuck with my parents on a family vacation because my best friend didn't have the luck I had in requesting a week off from an internship. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with vacationing with your parents, but it's a little hard to pick up girls on the beach unless your father can double as your most coveted wingman. Even though I struck out on the beach, I still found the courage to rekindle things with an old flame.

Speaking of old friends, spending time with my best friends from high school is without a doubt my favorite aspect of summer. Nothing says home like a night of eating 50 cent chicken wings and watching the NBA Finals with the guys. Of course, that entails the all too trivial task of finalizing your plans via the group text you and your friends use for communication. In reality, your group message planning procedure probably looks something like this..

In the case that the above picture looks like the chalkboard after a typical day in the class you had to take over the summer, I pity you. In high school, people viewed summer school as a punishment -- something you had to do if you hadn't adequately applied yourself during the normal academic year. In college, summer school can become somewhat of a necessity for those looking to get ahead in their course requirements, or replace their past grades with summer retakes. Summer sessions at your university can provide a valuable alternative to the monotonous grind offered by the fall and spring semesters, provided you can actually find a course offering that satisfies one of your requirements. Did I mention they're not free?

If the summer session at your university hasn't forcefully deprived you of your break this year, you still might find other commitments delving into your seasonal free time. To my knowledge, most college students who return home for the summer temporarily resume their roles at the jobs they held during their high school years. Some lucky college students land summer internship positions, and must relocate to an entirely new location for their companies. Or, if you have my exceptional luck, you can live at home, roll out of bed, throw on dress clothes and arrive at your desk in five minutes. Of course, the most difficult aspect of the summer internship is the forfeiture of about half of the college student's standard sleeping hours.

Summer is also a good time to pick up a new hobby or branch out your interests. Even with your job and summer classes, more than likely, you will have plenty of time to take a step out of your comfort zone and try something new. After all, no college student wants to return to school in August feeling as if they just watched three valuable months waste away in front of their eyes. To quench my thirst for adventure this summer, I trekked out into the vast bayou, harpoon in hand, to hunt and bring home the largest gator I could find.

Disclaimer: I purchased this preserved gator head from an antique shop in Cape May, N.J. No wildlife was harmed in the production of this article. The trip to the shop was still an adventure, though.

If you're looking for something simpler to do over your summer break, you can always do the things you thought of while you were at school, but promised yourself you would do over summer. Surely, you've compiled a list of these tasks after a semester's worth of nights of sitting in your dorm room staring aimlessly at your homework. While each entry on your list may vary in difficulty, they've all been undoubtedly delegated to the "summer to-do" list because of time. You can't possibly go party with your friends tonight because you have to turn your paper in by midnight. Or, in some cases, you can't possibly turn your paper in by midnight because you have to go party with your friends tonight.

Above all else, summer is about enjoyment and relaxation. If your summer break feels like you're still in the middle of your fall semester, you should take a step back, examine yourself, and try to figure out if you are truly optimizing your time away from school. As college students that have not yet entered the real world workforce, we should enjoy our summers while we can. If we don't, we'll all look back one day while walking into the office and be angry with ourselves for not living it up.