There are many good things about that first week of summer at home. Your parents understand that you are exhausted from what I call the emotional roller coaster of the last week: studying for finals while trying to spend as much time as possible with friends who you might not see again until the fall, and simultaneously dealing with the annoying process of packing. I think parents would be the most lenient with our activities during this first week, if at any time during the summer. Without any obligations, and not yet eager to search out high school friends, I saw that this first week had potential to be sublime ? sublimely relaxing, that is.
Twelve hours of sleep. For many people at college, that is how many hours they sleep over the course of a few days, but during the first week home I had the chance to get this much sleep every single night. After several days though, sleeping this much lost its appeal simply due to the fact that I was not expending energy like I had at school. I didn't go to the gym (hey, my sneakers were packed in luggage that had not yet been delivered by UPS, what could I do?), and my mind was no longer tired from studying. I just didn't need that much sleep anymore.
Another great thing about the first week home for me was Marathon Television. By this I don't simply mean continuous television-watching sessions, I literally mean TV show marathons. Cable channels often play sequential episodes of a show one after the other for several hours, either for the heck of it or in anticipation of a season finale. Having not had a television at Penn, marathon TV was perfect for me because over the course of an afternoon I could avoid the job search and catch up on all that had happened in my favorite television shows. Marathon TV became my new favorite mode of entertainment ? until I had watched the most recent episodes, that is.
While certain things can make coming home enjoyable, the first days home are also very weird. I mean, now, instead of IMing with friends who live next door to you, you IM with them across a much larger distance. That's just not cool. And the people you start to see the most are now your parents, as opposed to your best friends. I have to admit that I think the First Week's allure is destined to wear off pretty quickly. Let's just say I might actually spend more hours job searching this week than sleeping and watching TV. But I wouldn't want to get ahead of myself.
