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Column: Summer fun?
Summer break is a great time to relax, but Deren Kudeki explains that sometimes it is more important to kick back a little during the school year. There's nothing like the crush of homework and tests to make us savor a few moments of leisure.
EVEN THOUGH MAY is barely half over, I find my thoughts constantly drifting toward summer — thinking about all the free time I will have and how much I will be able to do without a constant stream of class work bombarding me.
I will have time to read what I want. I will have time to browse the Internet for hours on end without regret.
I will be able to rent lots movies and TV shows from Blockbuster or That's Rentertainment. I will have time to buy and play video games that I have been eyeing the greater part of the school year.
And, if I am so inclined, I can throw some exercise in there as well.
But if last year serves as an example for me, it will be a challenge to do little more than sleep in the morning and watch videos on YouTube the rest of the day. Last summer, I found I was so inactive, I was rarely able to muster up the energy to go all the way downstairs to plug in the PlayStation 2 or GameCube before using them.
In retrospect I find that I had actually played a lot more video games during the school year than the summer that came immediately after.
At first this confused me. How and why was I able to take the time to play video games during the school year, a time usually reserved for moaning and whining about how little time I have?
After thinking about it I realized that the school year was when I needed this time the most. It is a time of stress, when relaxation can only really be packed into hour-sized bundles filled with fun.
But during summer I already have little to no work to do, so there is a lot less incentive or need to go and play video games.
The few times I did play, I felt that it was not as fun as it had been during the school year. Now maybe it is because by summer I had thoroughly beaten all the games I own, but I feel it is because I didn't really have any stress to relieve (shooting imperial stormtroopers on the TV screen is a great way to relieve stress, I've found).
During the summer I am already calm and relaxed. In fact, I was so relaxed last summer that it felt like work to even to leave my room.
The only reason I had the energy to watch movies over the summer is because my computer has a built-in DVD player, so I don't have to leave the comfort of my computer chair. I only went to the movie theater twice despite the free time and releases of summer blockbusters.
This summer hopefully I will lead a slightly more active lifestyle and have the energy to at least be able to get some variety in my summer relaxation.
And when next school year rolls around, I will try to make more time to go to movies, play video games, or just hang out with my friends.
Perhaps actually using my brain this summer is still too much to hope for, though.
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— External link: A brief history of summer vacation
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