I hate to break it to you, but you’re not in Europe anymore.
To the person reading this who is in the (what feels to be) small minority of people who actually stayed in the United States — or even North Carolina — this summer, good news! This reality check might hit you a little less hard.
Summer is gone. We’re trading in sun-drenched days for fluorescent library lighting and the sound of pool splashes for bell tower chimes.
Days spent taking summer classes in historic French cities are now spent in brick buildings on the quad. You're not walking out of the subway to your dream internship — you’re walking to Phillips Hall.
You were in your “city era," “beach era” or aforementioned “study-abroad-summer era,” but now it’s all been leveled. Like it or not, we’re back in our “college student era.”
As a collective, we’ve begun to blur the lines between fiction and reality.
No doubt a product of social media trends, we see ourselves as main characters and, instead of simply living life through its respective seasons, we’ve begun to label them with token “eras” that shape how we might act, dress or live.
So when the credits roll on your “hot girl summer,” what comes next? When we specifically define periods of our lives, it can lead to a harder time transitioning between different phases. However, accepting where we are as opposed to striving to be somewhere else can help combat this.
At the end of the day, romanticizing your life is a double-edged sword.
