With summer underway, families are packing bags, booking tickets, praying that by some miracle they will actually remember to take everything this year (including their children), and making last-minute arrangements for their pets.Oh the sweet, blissful hubbub of summer fun. That wonderful time when you just get out of school, but instead of relaxing you get to run around the house packing things and sitting on suitcases (sometimes with your brother) to shut bags that are overflowing with things that you keep insisting you absolutely need on your trip to visit your grandma, or some other relative that your parents have decided that they need to see this summer.
For some families preparations like these are imperative, however, for families like Marshall High School junior Annie Dorjporev’s, it does not involve more than a “hurry pack, we are going to Chicago for the summer” from her mother.
Dorjpurev, who is going to be visiting her family in Chicago this summer, said, “My family doesn’t really plan trips in advance.”
“I could just wake up one day and my mom would have made the plans overnight.”
For others like senior Alex Ouyang, who is studying at Brown’s pre-college program, it required a little bit more planning, including filling out an application and sending in her transcripts.
Ouyang is taking a journalism class with Pulitzer prize-winning professor Tracy Breton, who works for the Providence Journal (aka the “Projo”) also known as the oldest daily newspaper in the U.S.
The experience so far has introduced her to names like Scott MacKay who works for NPR in Rhode Island. In addition, she has been given a chance to tour the Providence Journal, has met with the executive editor and has had the opportunity of attending a news conference.
“I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people from all over the world, so it’s been a lot of fun,” she said. “But it is also really scary because we are treated like professionals in the class and it puts a lot of emphasis on accurate names and fact checking.”
However, not everyone’s summer plans are so focused. Junior Jessica Frye summed up her variety of summer plans in a sentence: “Babysit for some spare change, go sailing around the Chesapeake Bay in my family’s sailboat, and go with my family on our annual trip to New Jersey.”
The economy has cast a shadow on one of her plans, as the docking costs have increased these past years.
“We are looking for cheaper places to dock,” she said. “Otherwise, all you need is the wind.”
These are just some of the things that teenagers have planned for the summer. While summer remains the time of the year where the stress just melts away for some or becomes even more oppressive for others, it never fails to bring some level of comfort and freedom for all.
Monika Bapna is a rising junior at Marshall High School.
