A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend on Facebook when she suddenly brought up a topic I had been subconsciously avoiding – what are your summer plans? I began to type out a response, something around the lines of “not sure yet, haha”, when I started to second-guess myself. What kind of answer was that?
People always talk about summer vacation as a time of opportunity, a time for radical new experiences that help you learn and grow. All I had at that point was a vague idea of flying home after five months at university, meeting up with friends from high school I hadn’t seen for a while and maybe catching up on some of the television shows I had neglected in the haze of writing essays and revising for exams. Most of my friends had already started sending out resumes for potential internships and work experience activities, while others had told me excitedly of their plans to travel in the summer. I was left with an empty blank slate of three months stretching ahead of me, with no plans in mind.
Work experience was the first option I focused on, going online to various databases to search for internships during the summer. But I soon became completely stressed out, imagining various scenarios of spilling coffee on company executives and not being able to complete my responsibilities. So I decided to put that on the backburner. Then I thought about doing freelance writing during the summer for various websites and magazines, and while that that would be a good option for me part-time, I wanted to find other activities for my time as well. I also started to look at different volunteer organizations in Hong Kong, but couldn’t find any long-term positions for the summer.
It was after two whole days of frustrated searching and trying to come up with a plan that I had an epiphany – summer is indeed a time of exploration and experimentation, and getting myself so worked up about my plans was completely counterproductive. I’ve realized that trying out different options and activities is a good thing – by choosing not to define my summer in a few simple terms such as work experience or travel, I have opened myself up to more possibilities.
The lesson here? It’s okay to be lost and confused about what you want to do sometimes and it’s okay if you don’t always have to have things figured out. \