A season between deadlines

When the semester ends and summer starts, make it a time of growing connections (without LinkedIn open).

Photo by Ankita Mandal/The Barnard Bulletin

By Ankita Mandal

May 31, 2025

“So, what are you doing this summer?”

It’s the equally vague, equally loaded, and frequently asked  sequel to “How’s school going?” that arises at the exact moment you feel least interested in answering.

You hear it from professors, classmates, your mom, your mom’s cousin, that girl from your hometown who somehow knows everything about your life without having seen you since senior prom. The question seems harmless enough, even polite, but it never feels casual. It’s laced with expectation, the subtle implication that you should have something lined up, something worth reporting. And more than that, you should sound excited about it.

And maybe you do. Maybe you’re interning, working, researching, creating, showing up every day with your little ID badge and your water bottle and your adult pants that were sweatpants just a semester ago. You’re grateful, of course. You know how hard it is to even get a foot in the door. But that doesn’t stop the fatigue from creeping in, the kind that no morning routine or productivity app can really fix. You can be both proud of your plans and quietly craving something slower, softer.

Summer can just be one of those seasons when your life shifts in ways you can feel in your bones, and last summer was one of them for me.

I found myself happily tucked away in a Boston research lab from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., surrounded by whiteboards, coffee cups, and people who always seemed to be halfway through solving something brilliant. I loved it. I loved the low hum of computers, the scribbled notes, the steady feeling that something important was unfolding even if I could not see all of it yet. There were journal meetings where I tried to keep up, tiny victories that made my brain light up, afternoons where hours disappeared without me realizing. Even on the days that my head ached from thinking too hard, I felt lucky to be exactly where I was.

Of course, no one tells you that even when you are doing something you love, you can still come home at the end of the day feeling completely wrung out. Still, it was in those moments with my guard down that I made the most memories.  Luckily, by some miracle of the internet, I had also found a roommate, a complete stranger I plucked from a slightly chaotic midnight Facebook post when I was one minor crisis away from living in a library. Somehow, she turned out to be the perfect person at the perfect time.

As soon as I walked the 15 minutes back to our shared room, I’d be back out the door with her. We wandered Newbury Street at sunset, made questionable fashion choices at Buffalo Exchange in Cambridge, treated trying Wingstop for the first time like it was a sacred rite of passage. Some nights we drank blueberry juice from wine glasses and invented backstories for strangers we passed. Some nights we just sat and laughed at the terrible Facebook profile that had led me to her without even trying.

And somehow, those evenings, the aimless, sparkling, nothing-to-prove kind of nights, felt as important as anything happening inside the lab. Both were building me up to be someone who could love the rush of the day and still find joy in comfort by dinnertime.

As busy as that sounds, the summer before that looked different in every possible way.

There were no journal meetings, no deadlines taped to my fridge. I spent my days volunteering at a local daycare when I felt like it, mostly listening to a 4-year-old explain how he was going to “drive airplanes” when he grew up, crashing into my leg every few minutes to demonstrate his plan. My afternoons were spent driving circles around the same mall with my friends, parking in the Target lot with no plans of actually buying anything, and sitting in my living room at night, watching “Seinfeld” reruns with my family even though I secretly couldn’t find them funny.

That summer did not add anything flashy to my resume. But it gave me something else. It taught me the kind of outlook I wanted to carry forward, one where becoming someone could feel like wandering too, not just working. One where growing up did not have to mean rushing through all the good parts.

So for others, that first question might come with a different kind of uncertainty. Maybe there is no internship, no rigid plan, no color-coded schedule to rattle off. Now, there is all this time. Time you have been quietly craving all year, and now finally have. And while that openness can feel unfamiliar, it can also be expansive. Because underneath all the noise, you might finally get to ask yourself what you actually want to do.

A summer without a roadmap, internship, job, volunteering or not, doesn’t mean you’re behind. As overplayed as it may sound, it means you get to slow down long enough to hear what your life sounds like without the noise. It means you get to build your rhythm from scratch. You get to experiment. To rest without apology. To try things on and put things down again. To take long walks, spiral a little, sleep in, start over, and find out what nourishes you when no one’s watching.

Either way, this season has a way of confronting you. When the group chat is scattered across the country, when the calendar clears, when the days stretch a little too long or blur a little too quickly, you’re left with yourself. Your thoughts, your routines, your body, which might still be holding tension from an entire year of pushing through.

So much of the academic culture at Barnard and college in general demands that you compress yourself into something efficient. During the school year, your value is measured in deadlines met, papers written, and boxes checked. But summer, in its best, truest form, asks something else. It asks you to expand and finally get reacquainted with your nervous system in a way that doesn’t revolve around surviving the next wave of stress.

And no, this doesn’t mean you need to wake up at 6 a.m. to meditate or delete every social media app on your phone. Resting isn’t about going off the grid or performing inner peace against others. It’s about making room for your mind and body to simply exist without needing to be useful every second of the day.

For students especially, that kind of pause can feel radical. But it’s more than a luxury, it’s actually protective. Research has shown that quality sleep and emotional balance are directly tied to stronger academic performance, regardless of gender or existing sleep struggles. It’s not about working more, it’s about recovering well.

And recovery isn’t limited to sleep. Your environment matters too. A 2024 study highlighted how exposure to natural, restorative spaces, like parks, gardens, or even a sun-drenched bench, helps students recalibrate cognitively and emotionally. When you’re no longer surrounded by fluorescent lighting and urgency, your brain starts to remember what clarity feels like.

These little moments — the pause between tasks, the breath before logging on — are what rebuild your inner rhythm. They help you hear yourself again. They remind you that being still doesn’t mean being stuck.

And summer, more than any other season, gives us permission to choose stillness. That’s not a setback; it’s a strategy. Research indicates students who use summer breaks for intentional rest and reflection return to the classroom with stronger coping skills, more adaptive thinking, and higher creativity. Doing less now doesn’t derail progress. It lays the foundation for deeper growth.

And maybe the bigger lesson is this: what if we didn’t wait for summer to feel like we could breathe? What if we brought some of that permission into September, October, even finals week? Rest does not have to live only in the margins of our lives. When we practice it regularly, even in small doses, it becomes part of how we learn, cope, and connect all year long.

That doesn’t mean you have to abandon your ambition, but it does mean your worth isn’t tied to how many things you’re juggling. Some days might look like a spreadsheet and a blazer. Others might look like an hour at a coffee shop with nothing urgent to say or solve. And both matter.

So yes, show up. Be sharp, be present, wear the blazer if you must, but also close the laptop. Let yourself nap. Let the sunlight hit your face before your notifications do. Remember how it feels to eat without the Hewitt to-go box in hand, to move slowly without questioning whether the tunnels will get you to the library faster, and to schedule a walk without Google Calendar queued up. This is the time to give yourself the kind of gentleness you’ve scheduled for everyone else all year.

Because summer doesn’t need to be a comeback or a breakthrough. It can simply be a return.