While for some it’s never welcome and for others it’s embraced wholeheartedly, the end of summer vacation is here. It’s time to take out your bucket list and start from the top. Or maybe it’s time to make a bucket list and cross out all the epic things you did, places you saw, people you loved, food you ate and trails you trailblazed to get back to Berkeley. To welcome you back, we at The Daily Clog compiled a list of things to say goodbye to and a few to say hello to.
1. Goodbye free time, hello fall semester. Exams, online homework with midnight deadlines and endless emails from everyone that knows you — fall is marked by schoolwork. But autumn’s harsh reality is dispelled by a prevailing truth: that we at Berkeley love learning, studying and making things, which why we are here in the first place. So rather than let the idleness of summer spoil and rust, it’s time to take to the libraries, lecture halls and streets and make something of ourselves.
2. Goodbye summer seniors, hello freshmen. Those of us who spent a summer with friends are now saying goodbye. Some of us are saying bye to fellow seniors who only needed one summer class to graduate, and others are saying bye to the friends we see only over the summer at home or abroad. Yet Berkeley always brings so many of us together. Now it’s time to welcome new freshmen who have made it passed the pummels and throes of standardized testing and college applications. It’s time to go to lecture, morning yoga, afternoon club meetings, Friday night parties and hang out with new friends.
3. Goodbye sleeping in, hello nightlife. The precious beauty belonging to summer, sleeping in, once again vanishes in the tumult and excitement of fall semester. And it doesn’t just vanish because of group projects and reading assignments. In late August, the city of Berkeley changes altogether. While usually, the lines at the movies are no shorter in the summer than the fall, the main attractions around town really awaken once students return. Once students return, more restaurants open for lunch. Bars stay open later. Frat row, Telegraph Avenue, downtown Shattuck and Cheese Board all bustle with nightlife. We are surrounded by shows and festivities that make it all the more enticing to bulldoze through schoolwork in order to have Friday and Saturday night free.
What will you miss over summer? What are you stoked about for fall semester? Talk about it by posting below.
Contact Josh Escobar at [email protected]