Sofia Kaufman

Diana

AP Lit

June 11, 2012

Final Paper: College Essay

If money and family obligations left you entirely free, how and where would you spend the summer before college?

If money and family obligations left me entirely free the summer before college, I would go to the airport the day of graduation, look at the flights leaving, pick a destination, and go.

Honestly, I’ve been so ready to go for years that I would go anywhere at this point. I’m not running from anything, but rather to something else bigger and better. I’ve lived in the same small town, in the same house, and grown up with the same people all my life. While I appreciate everything that my upbringing has done for me, I’m ready to be on my own. I’m bored with the same mundane activities and people that I’ve been saddled with my entire life. I want to be in a foreign city, not know the language, and travel with nothing but an outdated map, my passport, and a change of clothes in my bag. I want an adventure, I want to meet new and interesting people, and to see the things I’ve read about in books and seen in movies.

I would then come home the week before I would have to leave before college, pack, say goodbye to my parents, all the while knowing that I am never moving back. I don’t plan on going home in the summers. I plan on getting internships or studying all summer.

I know, so unique and original. The high school girl saying, “Ugh…I just want to get away and figure out what I want to do with my life. I’m sick of high school. Blah.” I know; it’s teenage angsts at its finest. But in all seriousness, I feel like I never really enjoyed high school the way that most people do. I’m not a partier, so I only went to a few “high school parties,” and I was always so involved doing my own thing with people who didn’t go to my high school that I was never particularly close to anyone I went to school with. I’m ready to go and find people that share common interests as me, and enjoy the same things, people I wasn’t able to find at New Paltz High School.

Last summer, I went to London with my father while he had some business meetings. I absolutely loved it. He was in meetings a lot, so I had time to do my own thing. I loved being in a different culture, learning the way of life. By the end of the second day, I was a pro with the train and bussing system. By the end of my time there, I knew that I wanted to go back there and live there. I went home and immediately started searching schools in London, but it costs so much money for foreigners that I could never afford to go there right after high school. I think for me, London symbolized something new and different, something that I had been looking for, for a while. In a strange city, not knowing anyone, I could be whoever I wanted to be. Now whether or not I end up in London is entirely debatable.  But I would like to eventually live somewhere new and exotic.

I know that travelling around the world at seventeen is unrealistic for me at the moment. I have family obligations, I could never afford it, and I don’t expect my parents to give me that kind of money. So for now it remains a fantasy. I know that as soon as I can though, I will travel and go wherever I please. I know that I’m going to do a year abroad in college, and I would like to get a job out of college that places me in a foreign city. So for now, I’m just looking forward to college (I am actually really excited for college) and I’m ready to go and do whatever life throws in my way. That’s what I would do the summer before college.