It rained like hell this past weekend. Buffalo and everything south of it got slammed with snow. From what I’ve heard, we would have been buried in three feet of it if it had snowed here.
Today and yesterday were absolutely beautiful. It was sunny all day and topped out in the mid-50’s. You know it’s finally spring when the days feel more like cool summer days than warm winter days. Yesterday was windy, but it wasn’t the stinging, blistery wind of winter; it was a warm wind, a comforting wind that feels wonderful on a cool summer evening. I’m just hoping it holds out for the weekend. I’m planning to go home for a few days and want more than anything to spend most of it on a bike. I’ve seen so many guys out on their motorcycles this past week; unless you’ve ridden, you wouldn’t understand this kind of envy.
I’m still trying to decide what to do this summer. There’s no way I’ll know about any other co-ops by Friday, so it basically comes down to whether or not I want to keep working at the College of Business, or do something else. The more I think about it, the more I want to go home for three months. I’ve been feeling an unusual gravitation to home lately. I want to go back and reconnect with my family and the people I grew close to during high school. It’s weird to think that most of the people that I graduated with will be heading off into the real world in a month and a half now. I came into it expecting to spend five years at college, but I still feel like I’m ready to move on. Strangely, I sort of want to move on to where I came from. I couldn’t wait to get out of my home town, to meet new people and try new things. Now I want to go back and reminisce.
This decision is especially hard because I’ve only got a few quarters left at RIT. I had planned to co-op this summer and take classes during the fall and winter, leaving me with six months left in Rochester. Half of me wants to stay here and enjoy the company of my friends while I can, but the other half wants desperately to connect with the past I barely feel like I had.
I don’t know what I’d do this summer if I went home. I’ve only found a couple potential co-ops in the area, and none of them looked promising. My high school tech teacher (and de facto mentor) is asking around to see if he can find anyone looking for an intern, but it’s not looking good. I considered the option of taking some classes at the community college, but after looking at my class work sheet, a lab science and maybe a liberal art elective are about the only things I could do there. There’s an Apple store at the mall near my high school, which would be perfect, but I have no idea if they’re hiring (I’ll have to stop in this weekend). There’s a CompUSA about 20 minutes from home and things like Best Buy and Media Play. I don’t even really know where else I would go looking for a job. A lot of people I know find summer jobs, but I’ve been doing classes or co-op every quarter since the summer of 2002, when I worked full time for Tech Crew; it would feel strange taking a quarter off now, but it might be a welcome relief. A few months ago, I was in a funk for a while and wanted nothing more than to work with my hands for a while, to spend some time doing real, honest, blue-collar labor. Maybe spending another summer working in the MJ shop would help ground me (it was my first full time summer job, when I was 15).
Most decisions in my life are made on a whim, and it usually works out OK for me. This one has caused more stress and serious consideration than anything I’ve done in years, and it’s only for a three-month commitment. I’m going to call my parents tomorrow and talk it over with them. I’ve tried so hard to be independent of them since I was a kid, but I’ve learned time and again that they usually know what they’re talking about. It’s hard to admit that they were right and I was wrong, but it’s happened more times than I care to count.
