Okay, so I lied. Summer is not so idle. For quite a few of us. Volunteering, summer courses, jobs – you name it. So key is a well-utilized summer, in fact, that colleges make a special space for it in applications, inquiring as to what use was actually made of three, long, seemingly vacuous months.

That’s generally enough of a motivation. Students I know work and volunteer and study all summer long. Granted, summer still retains the beauty of a significant lack of obligation. Indeed, all of the work that’s packed into our schedules is of our choice.

And that is precisely where I’d like to make my point. Required reading, standardized tests, and mandatory guidelines versus the poison of your choice. Autonomy is the basis of any human dignity. And even high-achievers and GPA mongerers prefer the more personalized work of the summer holidays.

Whether the summer job has the student ladling out greasy food to snappy customers or monotonously shelving and filing the papers that nobody cares to file or even ever look back at, it is indeed a blessing. It’s that thing the student chose to do. So no matter how much she gripes or fusses about it, she still has a swelling sense of pride as she thinks, yes, this is what I chose.

And volunteering is far more fulfilling in the summer, when the student realizes that she personally is devoting her relaxing time to something else. The school year is peppered with a whole slew of minimum hour requirements for this honor society and that volunteer program, and, no matter how much the student strives to charm those warm, fulfilling feelings into her heart, she still feels as though she’s just doing the work that she’s doing because a) it finishes the last of her needed hours and b) it fit more neatly into her schedule.