My girlfriend finishes her first year of college this week, and in another two weeks, I can say the same. But she was anxious, a disbelief that our first year of college is rapidly coming to a close, even though the fact that we’ll be together again under the warm, late-spring sun of Florida looms close over our heads. Yet my life here feels more ingrained by the day: I have tasks to accomplish and people to keep up with that the thought of boarding a two-hour flight and picking up with the people and events I left off with is becoming odd. Though waking up to more mornings with the sun on my face makes that end-of-the-year feeling grow exponentially.
I question anyone of my age who believes that summer isn’t the best season. Perhaps in the future when we’ve joined the working world, our opinions will differ, but you can’t argue that being free from what you’re expected to do for four months sounds ethereal. Reading for leisure, realizing you have this week, the next and the one after that to do as you please, being out at three in the morning sweating from the humid air, it’s when you can stop wishing that your life operated more like a film because it inevitably ends up that way.
But I’ve always thought that the only thing better than summer itself is its onset. The penultimate week of school during which you return your textbooks and carry less with you to your daily excursions; the mind becomes dominated with subtle thoughts of an entirely new experience to a year that has been laden with exhaustion, deadlines and changes in every angle of things. The flowers of spring tend to remind us well that peace is forthcoming and will continue to bring stagnant beauty to our lives for summer forces us all to simply be.
I’ve rounded both ends of my life out this year. I can’t recall how or when this happened, but again I sit here reminded that I play a small role in the world; our problems will work themselves out if we decide to attend to them or not. I and many others find solace in these final weeks of the semester, and it’s no surprise why. I made it through the year that I was sure would never end or would add chaos to the turbulence of my life. Yet I’m able to be here sitting in the heat of the day creating fantasies of what the months of summer could possibly turn out to be. Two weeks left and the idea of freedom becomes a reality.
Garrett Lemery is a freshman studying communications at Ohio University and a columnist for The Post. Are you ready for summer? Email Garrett at gl496111@ohiou.edu.
