Coming from Summer Burnt

During their summer escapades, some students tan. Others burn. Either way, students proudly (if painfully) display their marks of summer fun as they reluctantly find themselves in classrooms. But this year, like many students, I return to school displaying both tan and burn.

Luckily for me, my olive skin protects me from the sun, but I’m returning to school already emotionally exhausted from the homework associated with AP (advanced placement) and other honors-level classes because I crammed my summer homework into the last few days of the vacation.

I had to read six books over the summer, including The Winter’s Tale, Canterbury Tales, and even the Bible. Then, the assignment was to select countless quotes from these stories and write personal responses in order to teach me to learn to read for meaning and, in turn, prepare me for the AP test. And that’s only for AP Literature. In addition, I’m enrolled in AP English and Statistics.

Now, I know that teachers and parents always say, “Don’t procrastinate; do your work early,” or something like that, but it’s not always that easy. For students participating in summer school -- which ends midway through the summer -- doing this work the second half of vacation seems easy. But I didn’t take summer school. I was lucky enough to find myself as an intern at the L.A. Times, putting in a full work week, which didn’t lend itself well to a vast amount of extra school work.

Here’s the crux of the problem: I actually DID something with my summer that will advance me towards college and a career. I found myself out in the real world, doing real-world work. This system of assigning excessive preparatory work discourages me from engaging in extraordinary, non-academic opportunities over these few summers before I find myself burdened with adult obligations. There was simply no way for me to easily balance my own exceptional employment opportunity with my academic demands.

So, like many others, I ended up cramming the vast majority of this work into the three days before school started. That’s why my skin may be a perfect shade of tan, but emotionally, I’m already burnt to a crisp.

--Nick Giulioni