Although the current weather may not allude to it, our summer vacation is right around the corner. That’s right – we’re one month away from four months of outdoor concerts, backyard barbeques, summer sun, and cottage country traffic.
While the luxuries of summer have probably never been more appealing than they are now – after an eternity of deep freeze and lack-luster skin here in the Great White North – the four month hiatus from overpriced textbooks and inadequate leg room in lecture halls begs the question: Where are you working this summer?
Yes, times are tougher than they were when we were 13 and (relatively) carefree. Working fulltime for a job we loathe is a typical coming of age story around here, particularly during your university years. But is summer, perhaps, more than just an opportunity to work a menial job?
This question is especially relevant for the graduating class of 2014 who, when entering the workforce at semester’s end, will presumably be working consistently until the age of 65.
Money makes the world go ’round and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. So go find a job that, at the very least, you can tolerate and will provide you a means to pay back your student debts. But more importantly, invest in the summer. Do something – be it a new hobby or volunteering – that will improve the self-worth of a present and future you.
If you watch the television show Parks and Recreation, you’re familiar with Ron Swanson, the whiskey-loving bacon connoisseur that heads the Parks Department in the bumpkin town of Pawnee, Indiana. Actor Nick Offerman, a small-town country boy from Minooka, Illinois, plays Swanson, and in a recent self-written blog post for the Huffington Post, Offerman offers some sage advice about the value of his lifelong hobby – woodworking:
“After teaching myself the fundamentals of heirloom furniture, mostly under the superb guidance of Fine Woodworking Magazine, I have found a discipline to which I can apply myself for the rest of my days, until my hands give out,” writes Offerman. “I’m crazy about the things I have learned to make from wood thus far, starting with furniture pieces (slab-top tables are a shop specialty) and small watercraft, like a mini yacht tender and a couple of canoes, complete with custom paddles. Now my sights are set on some stringed instruments. I’m preparing to build a line of ukuleles and then graduate to full-size acoustic guitars. I have impending designs for an ocean kayak and an enormous Shaker chest of drawers. My only complaint is that there are not nearly enough hours in the day.”
You see, hobbies have an intrinsic value to them far beyond anything measurable by a dollar sign. I am sure you have a grandparent who you remember being a master sewer, a self-proclaimed mechanic, or a jack-of-all-trades. Learning something just for the sake of learning something seems to be an art for a time past, where a semi-regular job and a savings account could buy you a new Mustang and a down payment on a four-bedroom house.
In what are supposed to be the years where we “find” ourselves and fall in love with life, we are delegated to shoe salespersons, burger flippers, and landscapers, and by the time September rolls around, we’re left wondering what the fuck we have to show for the past four months of intellectual stagnancy.
Sp go get a job and help lighten the financial burden of post-secondary education for your debt-ridden parents – because that’s what a good offspring ought to do.
But also take the next four months to create something bigger than the mighty dollar, bigger than a new pair of shoes, and bigger than a self-loathing status update or tweet. Learn a skill that – in between lunch breaks that never seem to last long enough, nights that are consumed with the hypnotic waves of a television set, and weekends of whiskey-soaked escapades that escape memory and morality – allows you to grow as a human being.
Go build a canoe.