There used to be a time when the sun rose and set with work. As a freshman at NYU, I had two part-time jobs and an internship, which later evolved (devolved?) into one part-time job and two internships. In between classes and a long-distance boyfriend, I coded data for a research lab on babies and adolescents’ Daily Routines, entered data into SPSS, and helped run lab experiments. That was one. The other one was at an academic journal, where I did research on attachment trauma (ooh), wrote/edited psych papers, and analyzed data I ended up writing up for a conference. There was also the being personal assistant bit for a French professor and psychotherapist. In between classes, where I finished the year decently — but not enough. My friends had come back from the city and I had no time to see them. I was on a race to a finish line, and no one could see it but me.

But this blog isn’t about that, as exciting as all of that might have sounded… My ramblings on here will be about jobs, but maybe not quite in the way you think. It’s about me, my future, and a list. More on that later.

One of the things that a lot of people want when they come to NYC is to make something of themselves. I’ll resist the Jay-Z/Alicia Keys allusion and simply say that even as a native New Yorker, as a freshman I, too, felt like there was a nagging sense of urgency. I felt it as I woke up after a late night writing papers, as I waited in the line @ the Starbucks on West 4th that looped around the column and spilled out into the street. It was an electric pace as fast as the oncoming 2 train, making me feel that if I was standing still, I was wasting my time.

We New Yorkers — even down to the college students — run on invisible treadmills that speed up in tandem to the city beat. We worry about what we’re doing for the summer at the end of fall semester and know more about networking than our parents ever did. The city is alluring, sure — but are we growing up too fast?

I certainly thought so. As this summer rolled around, I had no intention of repeating last year. And so, for this summer I made a conscious decision not to work. Come to think of it, it was kind of like Lent, except instead of giving up meat or candy or biting my fingernails, I was giving up work. Such is New York. Such is one who did so much that a therapist diagnosed her manic.

In all seriousness, though, admitting to myself that there would be a strange gap in my resume for May 2010-August 2010 was unsettling at best, terrifying at worst as I saw a friend go off to Peru for microfinancing, another working for a Skadden Arps, a law firm near Bryant Park. What if this made me unprepared for internships junior year? What if employers thought I was a slacker — or even worse, burned out after the enormous load I had put on myself the summer and year before?

Then I thought about waking up at 7:30am every other morning to code, analyze, and clean data. I thought about how in that summer, I could tell you all about the triune brain in relation to cultural-specific attachment trauma theories, but I couldn’t tell you what I did in my free time. I thought about how spent my days running around the city trying to get a grip on all my three commitments, eating lunch and typing up notes, finding it hard to relax. I thought about how much better it would be to not do this ever again.

We are more than flesh and bone, much richer than the output that society hoists itself upon. It starts with understanding that we are more than the work that whirs and disappears into society’s inner machinations, the hours that leave us with little to call our own. It starts with looking past the big name companies. Our lives start with us.

And for me, it starts with a list that has time yet to blossom in totality, creating my own culture, my own ethos of living that isn’t measured by the pace of the city. Follow my personal journey at asummeroffruition.blogspot.com. And here at Campus Clippers, I’ll discuss all the nitty-gritties of the college students’ job market. It’ll go beyond hokey titles like “Maximizing YOUR Internship Experience,” and delve into how to achieve your own personal projects that you want to see go professional. We’ll talk about getting paid, or not getting paid, and everything in between. And don’t worry — it won’t feel much like work. You already know how I feel about that.

-Emily H

Find  Academic Discounts!

NEW!  Check out our App on iTunes!

Become a fan of Campus Clipper on Facebook

Follow Campus Clipper on Twitter

sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter

Download the coupon booklet NOW