Summer is meant to be full of long, hot days spent poolside with friends. Summer is when kids and teens learn to love recreation all over again. Summer is for travel and finally getting to decide one’s own schedule.  Summer is for a break from the stress of AP tests, homework and expectations from extracurricular activities. School programs in the summer may be beneficial for resume building, but they encroach upon what the 10-week respite from stress is supposed to be about.

Students who participate in school activities during the summer can lose the time that they would have spent being able to enjoy their last few summers of being a kid. Not being a member of the workforce means that students are supposed to be able to go on road trips, play endless hours of ultimate Frisbee and go hiking. Instead, students now have to worry about getting summer jobs in order to pay for college, doing internships in order to get into said colleges and taking extra courses to graduate with more credits.

Of course, not all summer activities that provide structure and demand time from students are bad. Summer camps that focus on a specific subject can be a great way to spend a couple weeks during the summer because of the information and the friendships that are often formed during the camps. Doing volunteer hours during the summer could also be considered a school activity, but the difference between doing volunteer hours and playing dodge ball at ridiculously early hours in the summer for gym class is that volunteering benefits the souls and others, while summer PE is just a way to cram in extra credits before graduation.

The school year has already encroached upon August, one of the few sweet summer months we used to get each year, but school activities and sports taking up the majority of a student’s summer is not the way summer is meant to be spent.