One of my favorite professors once told me that college isn’t just about learning the material of your respective occupation or future career; it’s about learning how to navigate through the everyday things life throws at you, like time management, self-discipline and managing your ambitions such that they actually become realized. His words, compounded by me recently taking “What is the Good Life” — which, let’s be real, isn’t that terrible and could actually be great with a few major refinements — have had me thinking a lot about how I’ve spent my time in college, and how I ought to be spending it moving forward.
Unlike much of the UF Student Body, or at least those I lurk on Facebook, I didn’t spend much of my Spring semester curating what my summer was going to look like as it pertained to internships, jobs or anything that would actually serve to make me slightly more hirable once I graduate. Grappling with my academic and extracurricular responsibilities and the existential crises I’ve written about in this very paper proved to be enough. When asked by friends and family what I was doing this summer, I often replied that I didn’t know what I was doing in three hours, and it would be disingenuous of me to tell them what I was doing in three weeks. And so, as is wont to occur when one acts without a backup plan, when the hastily assembled “plans” I had for the summer fell through, I was left up shit creek without a paddle.
At first, I freaked out. For those who don’t know me (most of you), this would be my second summer where I didn’t have an incredibly prestigious internship in *insert glamorous American city here* and failed to plan a trip to *insert beautiful Western European locale here.* But then, it dawned on me: I had no one to “blame” but myself. Although I’m sure that many of you learned to take personal accountability for one’s lot in life years ago, as evidenced by your prestigious internships in glamorous American cities and trips to beautiful Western European locales, this is all very new to me, and it proved to be an exciting development in my ongoing education in becoming a functioning human being. This not-at-all profound realization marked a significant shift in how I approached the ever-encroaching summer: The three month period I was dreading and deathly afraid of had suddenly become one teeming with possibility and personal opportunities.
So, to those of you who unintentionally found themselves in Gainesville this summer, whether you’re taking classes, working, doing both or nothing at all (yet), don’t despair. Sure, you may not be like your friends in New York City bumping into famous comedians in the streets after dark, or like your roommate in Colorado taking advantage of the state’s thriving marijuana industry, but you have something their internships won’t provide: an opportunity for personal reinvention. Exercise. Read that book you’ve always wanted to. Pick up that instrument you’ve been dying to learn. As Bill Watterson once mused, the days are just packed full of possibility. Granted, this will require you to make a plan and actually stick to it, but hey, if not now, when?
It must also be acknowledged that if you were going to do a summer of self-discovery in any city, you could do much worse than Gainesville. It’s a city filled with attractive people, great bars, ample opportunities for academic and cultural fulfillment and Payne’s Prairie. If this column has driven a single person to Google “Payne’s Prairie” and begin to plan a trip there, or motivated someone to join that book club they’ve been flaky on, then my summer has already been made.
Zach Schlein is a UF political science senior. His column appears on Thursdays.
