Summer Is Over, Get Over It
by James Chenoweth The end of Labor Day means the beginning of the semester for most of you. Welcome back to real life. Classes, buying books, and re-kindling all those college relationships that die for three months a year but for some reason always return.
Here I am, Labor Day weekend - Southampton beach. The ocean waves look beautiful and the bodies in the club even more so. The sand beneath my towel; the waves crashing in front of me; the sun bright; the ocean breeze cool. Mankind invented laptops for an environment such as this. I could spend the next few minutes telling you how we should pine at the thought of not having scenes like this anymore, but I think I will tell you the real story.
Fifteen dollars beach parking. Twenty dollars beach club cover. Nine dollar drinks. One-dollar tips. The club is filled with so many beach thugs that the odds against me getting an attractive girl's number cannot be measured without using scientific notation. Although some of the hottest girls of the summer come here, also do the multitude of guys, turning an otherwise hopping club into a complete meat market.
Make no mistake - summer gets old. I cannot say that I had a seventy five dollar time in the Hamptons, and I have only been here for a couple of hours. A propeller plane pulls a banner across the sky advertising plastic surgery. Partying on a daily basis - as is our custom - cannot be done all year round, and three months of it is enough as far as I am concerned. Without a class schedule to moderate my lifestyle and occupy my time, I spend with impunity. Summer movies. Crawfish season. Even the breeze is getting to cold for enjoyment. The music: getting too loud.
You now have the opportunity to make a name for yourself in the academic world. Get out there and go to classes, or at least do your best pretending to go. Making friends during the school year comes at much less a price than meeting people in the bars and clubs of your hometown. Meeting a member of the opposite sex in class is a cakewalk compared to showing up at the hottest nightspots. And do you remember Saturday college game days? The bars after game days?
Besides, anyone that complains about college needs to take their fair dose of reality. Your parents go to 50-hour a week jobs, year after year. Chemical engineers do not get a summer off. But, eventually, you will make even more money than they did. You will retire earlier. And you will get to do all of it, without ever having to walk up a hill both ways. So, you don't get to go to the beach or river all weekend long anymore. So, you actually have to listen to the alarm when it goes off. I think I speak for fathers and mothers everywhere, when I say, “Cry me a river.”
In closing, I am telling you to grow up and embrace the new semester with open arms. You will not only learn more, but your positive attitude may change how others view your personality. Let's be honest - you need a personality change. |
