I don’t want to be home for the summer. It’s not that I have a problem with living at home with either of my parents. I love them and we have a wonderful relationship. But I don’t want to be home for the summer. I want to experience something new and exciting and a little scary too. I could nurse disabled senior citizens in upstate New York. There’s a program for that. I could tutor low-income high school students in Massachusetts. There’s a program for that. Perhaps the problem here isn’t what programs are available, but what programs I can get into.

My pickings are slim and I’m pick-pick-picky. As a first year college student I know I can’t be, but I am! I want to do work that is different from what I would be doing at a typical nine to five. If I can, I want to do something meaningful. I would love to help write grants for a nonprofit organization. And I would just die if I could teach English abroad. Such opportunities usually don’t provide an hourly wage per say, but have a weekly stipend that is enough to cover room and board. And that’s enough. I just need enough. The program’s location doesn’t have to be exotic but, as I mentioned before, it can’t be local. I also don’t want to be stranded somewhere awful for the sake of experiencing it. Home, but not home… sounds like Scripps College.

Thus, I decided last week to apply to be a Peer Mentor (Scripps College New Student Program) and Facilitator (Scripps College Academy). Both are not full summer programs, as they only require me to be on campus a few weeks in either August or June respectively, but their applications will ease me into my search process. Both got me thinking, what knowledge and experiences have I to share with others? More specifically, what have I to share with students who will soon undergo the uneasy transition from high school to college? It’s strange, because I still consider myself to be going through the transition. I still have trouble finding the ATM on the Smith Campus Center, so I walk once a week to Bank of America in the Village (it’s a great excuse to skip the gym).

Like most Scripps students, I have plenty of leadership experience. In high school, I was a member of the student government and cheerleading team for three years. During the third year, I was co-captain. But an experienced leader doesn’t necessarily make a good leader. I don’t have a lot of the answers. It was hard for me to respond to some of the Peer Mentor application’s hypothetical scenarios. I’m not sure what to tell a mentee if she has problems with her roommate or misses home. My relationship with my current roommate has never been problematic. I also miss home sometimes and understand that feelings of homesickness ebb and flow. You can’t really do anything to alleviate something so natural. Some days are better than others. Even now as I write this blog, I feel a trepidation building up.

Many programs, including the ones I’m applying for, also require letters of recommendation. While the Peer Mentor application does not require a written letter of recommendation, the SCA Facilitator application does. It must be written by an individual who has known me for a significant period of time. Who knows me better than my high school advisors, coaches, and teachers? But they seem to exist in an alternate universe far, far away now. I wonder if they still have copies of the letters they wrote for me last year. Is it awkward to ask for them? Is it perhaps even rude to ask after being out of touch for almost a year?

I don’t know what I’m doing this summer. The trepidation is new and exciting and little scary, too.