• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
College Magazine logo

College Magazine

College Life, Dating, Career & Campus Advice

  • Colleges
    • College Guides
    • College Rankings
    • Campus Life
      • Academics
      • Dating
      • Freshman Year
      • Health
      • Social Change
      • Party
    • Find Your College
  • Majors
    • All Majors
    • Most Popular Majors
    • Choosing a Major
  • Intern
    • Internship Directory
    • How to Get an Internship
    • How to Write a Resume
    • How to Write a Cover Letter
    • How to Interview
    • How to Network
    • Career 101
    • Find Your Passion Career
  • Money
    • How to Make Money
    • How to Save Money
    • How to Get a Job
    • Credit Cards 101
    • FAFSA
    • Ramen Project
  • Travel
    • Study Abroad
    • College Spring Break
    • How to Travel Cheap
    • Things to Do
  • Shop
    • College Magazine Shop
    • Gift Guides
    • College Packing List
Home » Latest Posts » Summer: Making the Best of an Abandoned College Town
Life

Summer: Making the Best of an Abandoned College Town

FacebookTweet
Alex McGuire May 28, 2013 (Updated: October 24, 2014)
Picture any abandoned city, such as the infamous nuclear disaster city Pripyat or the California mining town Calico. During the summer off seasons when the sun’s dried up all the alcohol-stained sidewalks and the majority of the student population travels to their hometowns near and far, many college towns become comparable to these ghost towns and appear to be only the visible remains of a time gone by.
 
Regardless of how empty our respective academic environments become during these hot summer months, there are still the soldiers among us that keep trekking on through these lonely times when college can be anything but the fun time that we’ve come to know and love during the academic year. Of course, the obvious irony is that we still try to go to bars and drink our stupid a**es off, regardless of the time of the year.
 
 

trending

109

How Graduation is Causing Me a (Good) Existential Crisis

Gretchen Rubin, author of Life in Five Sense
96

Awaken Your Five Senses with #1 NYTs Bestselling Author Gretchen Rubin

77

Adulting with Your Mom Is Fun


But students with the more important things to do over their three-month break (who really wants an internship?) tend to underestimate how great their sparsely populated college town can be during the summer. Being one of the few left at a huge university gives you the opportunity to participate in activities and establish relationships that would otherwise be more difficult and competitive during the school year.
 
If you happen to have a part-time job at college, this boring summer presents a golden opportunity to turn that part-time job into a full-time one. All this downtime on your hands can be utilized to make some serious coin to go into next year with. Who knows? Maybe you’ll have enough saved up to stop working and focus on school in the fall.
 
Even if your summer entirely consists of unproductively sitting at your nearby watering hole every day, it’s much easier to establish rapport with the characters operating behind the bar than it would normally be from September to May.
 
“I became really good friends with the bartender just because I would come for lunch every day,” said Devlin Barry-Hoke, a rising senior who lived at the University of Maryland, College Park last summer.
 
There are more opportunities to seize than you think as you stay at college and watch the populated town you’re familiar with become a much quieter place. It’s up to you to determine whether you’re living there or stuck there.
 
thumbnail image: http://www.inc.com/john-brandon/5-ways-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website.html

About Alex McGuire

Junior > Multi-Platform Journalism > University of Maryland

What To Do Next When You Don’t Know What To Do

Q&A with ASCEND app Creators Sydney Campos and David Richeson

How a Last-Minute Gap Semester Changed My Life

Is Online Learning Right for You?

10 Things All International Students Understand

5 Pre-Finals Rituals to Follow for Optimum Study Time

Life Lessons I Learned in Fitness Classes

A Dream Deferred

So I Moved Back Home After Graduation…

Previous Post:Music Recap: the Sweetlife Festival
Next Post:CM’s Summer Bucket List

colleges

  • College Guides
  • College Rankings
  • Campus life
  • Academics
  • Dating
  • Freshmen Year
  • Health
  • Party

majors

  • All College Majors
  • Most Popular Majors
  • Choosing a Major

intern

  • Internships Directory
  • How to Write a Resume
  • How to Write a Cover Letter
  • How to Interview
  • How to Get an Internship
  • How to Network

money

  • How to Make Money
  • How to Save Money
  • How to Get a Job
  • Credit Cards 101
  • College Loans

travel

  • Study Abroad
  • College Spring Break
  • How to Travel Cheap
  • Things to Do

shop

  • College Packing List
  • Gift Guides
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS Feed
  • Twitter
  • About Us
  • Team
  • Write
  • Apply
  • Privacy Policy
  • Sign Up
  • Advertise
  • My Account
  • Cart

College Magazine logo

Copyright © 2023 Powered by BizBudding