Ellen Finn ¦ Contributing Writer
So here I am, sitting on my bed at home. Term is over, essays are done, stress is finished. Yet, as I sit here frantically Googling low budget backpacking destinations, simultaneously involved in an increasingly heated group conversation online debating a potential trip Greek island-hopping in August, it seems college competition hasn’t ended with the submission of the final assignment. Instead, the indirect boasting, casual name-dropping and friendly rivalry continues long after the end of college term, the summer months offering social climbers a real opportunity to earn valuable bragging rites. Indeed, the dreaded phrase of the moment for someone unsure of their plans is not the ‘Oh, you hadn’t studied that?’ of exam season, but the old favourite ‘So, what are you doing this Summer?’.
I feel some kind of fundamental need to have my own holidays so carefully prepared, planned and packaged
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As someone whose response to the question this year consists of a multitude of vague and self-admittedly over-ambitious ideas, my reply is often met first with an expression of tangible pity, immediately followed by a detailed and inherently ah-maaaz-ing description of their own travels abroad. The question is not why this person seems hell-bent on informing me of every minor aspect of their American dream, but why I feel some kind of fundamental need to have my own holidays so carefully prepared, planned and packaged that I can reply with the same neat, all-encompassing – ‘J1’.
Of course, going on a J1, an internship, interrailing, to name but a few popular student jaunts, are amazing opportunities to gain both cultural and professional experiences, but us poor creatures who are remaining at home this Summer, or have yet to plan anything, should not be condemned to the ranks of the disorganised, uncultured or unambitious. There seems to be this increasing pressure to really do something with our precious three months, a discernible anxiety amongst the student body that our travelling days truly are numbered, that the inevitability of a ‘real job’ is right around the corner. Never before had this realisation hit me so hard as when a lecturer asked our class what our plans were, and amongst the excited whisperings of Bali, Madrid, Chicago and Crete, of which many people would probably hire a car from somewhere similar to e-mietwagenkreta to get around. I was shocked to be the only one who was working here in Ireland, admittedly only to afford a ticket elsewhere.
Long gone are the days where we were content with a ‘holiday’ as exactly that, as we grow older and ever more conscious of financial, professional and social expectations we naturally attempt to make the most of any time we have left as supposedly carefree and impressionable students. Yet the culture and experiences foreign destinations have to offer us have almost become currency in some social circles, ‘onreaaal’ stories of Thailand and San Diego replacing those of Coppers and D2s come September.
My family home, treasured during the brief visits of term-time, becomes an unlikely prison and my challenging and engaging job my keeper.
This anxiety about the lack of concrete plans for the summer months is entirely self-made and irrational, and yet it increases with every Facebook check-in at Terminal 2. I find myself continually justifying my decision to work at home instead of somewhere more alluring and exotic, promising myself that next year will be different. Like many other students who yearn for a taste of the unfamiliar and exciting, I have a tendency to see Ireland’s lush green fields and extensive coastline only as obstacles to a foreign other, rather than objects of beauty and spectacle in themselves. My family home, treasured during the brief visits of term-time, becomes an unlikely prison and my challenging and engaging job my keeper.
So no, I’m not keeping up with the Joneses this time, neither will I have built up a substantial catalogue of travelling anecdotes to pepper my conversation with throughout the year, yet I am genuinely excited for what the summer has to bring. By purposefully staying at home this summer, I’m pretty much guaranteeing that I won’t have the best tan, tattered leather bracelets or dodgy tattoo come Freshers’ Week, and certainly I won’t have been lucky enough to experience things that people who have travelled extensively have. Yet, any anxiety I have is being continually reduced by my growing sense of immediacy –a realisation that ‘living in the moment’ doesn’t have to be at a Full Moon party somewhere in Indonesia, but exactly as described – living, right here, right now. So although I would love to be counting down the days until the ‘trip of a lifetime’, I never want to miss the unexpected moments, those with old friends and family on lazy sunny afternoons, moments that can truly define your summer.
