Summer is upon us! My first year of Scripps has sadly come to an end, and though it has been one of the best years of my life, I am so excited to move forward and see what happens next.

The first order of business is summer. As I begin to pack up my dorm room and dream of sleeping in my own bed at home, I am reminded again of that feeling of anticipation–of starting something new, just when I was getting comfortable. With my first internship located an hour and a half away from my home, there is a very good chance I won’t be seeing as much of my family and friends as I thought I might be these next few months. Yet, as I did one year ago when I decided to take the plunge and accept Scripps’ offer of admission, I am wholeheartedly looking forward to this new experience, despite the fact that I cannot tell for certain where I will be or what I will be doing in just a few weeks.

Sometime between what remains of May and September, I hope to develop a clearer understanding about what I want to do moving forward. I have decided what classes to take and what activities I want to take up in the fall, but what will the long-term look like? Do my current professional aspirations align with my current academic path, my passions, my strengths? What will my major be? Am I keeping enough doors open to allow myself to experiment and perhaps change my mind?

This summer, as I foray into professional life for the first time and gain a bit of experience in the field, I hope I will be able to answer these questions with some degree of certainty. Come September I expect to have enough firsthand experience working with what it is I think I want to determine whether I know this is what I want to do moving forward. For me, being thrown headfirst into unfamiliar territory is the only way to know if it’s what I want to be doing. My internship with an environmental nonprofit organization positions me in a place to experience a variety of professional possibilities I am currently considering–marketing, PR, and communications work, a metropolitan office setting, a specific skill set (mostly writing, blogging, and interacting with media sources), etcetera–while simultaneously working with a cause I firmly believe in and what to learn more about.

Though it is an unpaid opportunity, I think the experience I will gain as I test the waters will come to pay dividends when I move forward in my academic and professional life. So it’s goodbye to Scripps for now, and hopefully by the time I arrive at this hallowed space once more in the fall, I will have a better notion about where my next three years and beyond will take me!