As students trade their busy schedules and course textbooks for a day to themselves and the occasional book here or there, many have various plans for spending their summer.

While it is good to have a plan for how you want to spend your time, especially so you can be respectful of everyone’s time and prior commitments when it comes to finding a day to hang out with people. However, I think a lot of us are so used to planning things out during the academic year that we forget to enjoy the spontaneous and mundane moments that come with summer break..

When it comes to planning, a lot of us are used to checking our Google Calendar to see what we have going on in our busy lives to see if we have the availability between classes, on-campus organizations and work to do things that bring us joy and excitement.

Some will say that going places or doing activities on the spot can be hard if you are the only one available to go. And while they do have a point, I like to counter and say that as someone who tries to plan everything out in her life, I sometimes forget that doing something unexpected can be fun.

In the summer, there are always events that show up in your area or that your friends send you on Instagram in hopes you will join them. Most events in the summer revolve around food and live music, which can sometimes become costly if you attend all of them. However, despite the monetary cost it creates, in the end, the memories you make with your friends or even family will be worth it, especially for those who are only able to head back home during the bigger breaks we have.

Now that’s not to say that if your friends are heading back to their home for the summer that you cannot have fun. Even if you can not have friends join in on your summer plans, you can still enjoy those events and you can even enjoy the random moments that we all take for granted.

While many of the everyday moments in our lives are things we do not see as fun or enjoyable, I like to think that there is something enjoyable about taking a drive to the store or anywhere with the music playing low. It gives you a moment of peace to yourself that is sometimes very hard to get in our day and if I’m being honest, that peaceful 15 or 20 minute drive helps.

I understand that not every event can be done in an enjoyable way, but I still think that those moments can help. While a lot of the ways I’m talking about appeal to those who are more extraverted, sometimes our introverted friends need those moments to “recharge” their social battery, which I fully understand as someone who only became extraverted as a result of the pandemic.

While a lot of summer events are geared towards extroverted people, you can still plan your own events and invite a small group of friends, too. For example, you could go bowling at one of the various bowling venues and rent out a few lanes or just have a picnic at one of the various lakes, which will provide a nice way to cool off in the summer heat.

While we all have our own ideas of how we will spend the summer, life never goes as expected and sometimes things go awry. While I still treat those unexpected changes like they are the bane of my existence, now that I’m older, I welcome them to a degree. Sometimes life has a way of forcefully reminding us to go with the flow when we overplan and stretch ourselves thin, while also telling us to have a small plan so that not everything is left to chance.

However, you choose to plan or not plan your summer, I want you to know that it is okay not to have everything planned out. I struggle with this the most but in the two years I have been at Hamline, I have learned a lot by taking a chance in trying something new and finding out how much fun it is and learning that a healthy dose of planning is good not just for academics, but in my own personal life as well.

Regardless of how anyone chooses to approach summer, summer is both a time to have fun and celebrate all that we accomplish in the academic year, and also to cherish the slow and mundane moments in our lives. We all live very different lives and we never know what the next year will bring for us — so enjoy yourself and cherish all the moments you get.