So, What Are You Doing This Summer?

If you’re a junior, you probably shouldn’t even be reading this right now. You should probably be freaking out because you don’t know what you’re doing this summer yet. Yeah— the deadlines are flying by and you just can’t bring yourself to stop watching old Futurama episodes, get off your lazy ass, and put in some applications. And by “reading,” I mean “writing” and by “you,” I mean “me.”

Fortunately for the both of us, I’ve written out my options for the summer, along with a convenient summary of the advantages and disadvantages of each choice:

Sleepaway Camp Counseling:
Pros: Day after day, you hang out in the woods, drink, and smoke pot. Hey— it’s like most Northeastern liberal arts colleges! HEY-O!
Cons: While teaching 6th grade girls to ride ponies might be your idea of a good time, you have to at least consider the argument that it’s more than a little gay. Unless, of course, you’re a pedophile. Or a hippophile. Also, you’re going to be cleaning up a lot of bodily fluids— kids tend to puke and bleed a lot if you don’t watch them carefully.

Goldman Sachs Internship:
Pros: Your parents approve and they pay you pretty well. Also, no one will try to ask you what you did at work, because they might not understand, and they certainly won’t care.
Cons: You feel like you’re doing daily violence to your soul, the work is hard without being interesting, your colleagues are morally repugnant, and worst of all, they make you wake up early.

Going Home:
Pros: Quality time with the family and your boys from high school, nice weather, and all the StarCraft you can handle.
Cons: Your parents keep trying to change the locks on you and your friends listen to an awful lot of Coldplay.

Pro-Choice Political Activism:
Pros: Work with women that you know wouldn’t want to keep it, free doughnuts and coffee, and you flex your artistic muscles writing witty slogans on protest signs.
Cons: Said women are probably indocile, you’ll probably piss off Father Skip, your young, hip youth pastor, and your friend who did it last year lost a leg at a Planned Parenthood bombing.

Defend the American Border with the Minutemen Militia:
Pros: Help keep freedom free by ensuring the cultural integrity of the great American Southwest.
Cons: Do too good a job and there will be no one to keep Scottsdale green and neatly trimmed. Do too bad a job and it’s goodbye to apple pie and hola to churros.

Backpacking through Europe:
Pros: A required experience for the cliché American Bohemian hipster, great food.
Cons: Unfavorable exchange rates and now the inclusion of yucky, Eastern European countries.

Working in a lab:
Pros: Free beakers, doing good for humanity, easy access to ingredients for the manufacture of meth, free test tubes.
Cons: Rubbing alcohol hangovers, omnipresent possibility of waking the dead

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