Every year as it gets closer, we all get tired.
Students start to slow down and work less. The sun is like some sort of vacuum sucking all of our motivation away. The thought that summer is just around the corner, three months away from school, is too powerful to ignore.
It’s a feeling that everyone knows. Even if they don’t admit it, they have felt this since elementary: Counting down the days until break. Looking at the calendar and willing it to go by faster so we can get to our summer fun!
It doesn’t really hit you until April or May, when the sun shows its yellow face. At that point, you stop drifting through school life in the daily routine that’s been developed. You wake up and realize that it’s almost time to be free and take a long break, but after the routine’s been broken there isn’t enough time to pick it back up. Going through the motions, wake up then go to school, do work at school then go home, and do homework then sleep — as always, sleep being optional.
Once the routine is broken, things slow down. Days are longer, clocks suddenly start moving backward, and worst of all it seems like summer gets farther away every day!
This is all caused by the sun, mind you. Were it not for sunny days in Washington — it would just keep cloudy and rainy until June 21 — we could practically sleep our way through school without even batting an eye!
Then on the first day of summer break, when the sun comes out and we realize suddenly that school is over and there is no wait, we can wake up from our routine and stop going through the everyday motions of school life. We can get up and go out and have fun.
The summer experience is as individual as the person. Some of us get a job, some of us go live with another relative for a while, and some of us go on vacations.
Using free time is when we are most individual, not like in school when we have to answer set questions and do lab work. It’s yours to decide what to do with. You can choose what to do, when to do it.
Make the summer yours.
— Kyler Lacey is a Kingston High School junior. He is in Running Start at Olympic College.
