Making the Most of the Summer
I grew up with three older sisters; the baby and the only boy. When I was five, my parents bought property upstate; a big field with some woods, and an enormous concrete lined pond. My father designed a “cabin,” resembling a shoebox on stilts, to overlook what we romantically called “the pool.” He hired contractors to erect the wooden frame and to install windows, electrical wiring, and a propane gas line. We did the rest. Fiberglass insulation, floors, Homasote® walls (look it up; the stuff is amazing!); we did it all. We creosoted all the lumber and slathered black tarry goop on the roof.
Building the house was our summer activity for a year or two. Then came the pool, fed by a creek that often dried up by the end of July. Late every summer the joyous watering hole would reveal its dark treasure: tons of mud. So shoveling mud became our signature family activity. Our anthem was the Flanders & Swan serenade The Hippopotamus Song, with its delightfully cheerful refrain: “Mud, mud, glorious mud.” We sang, laughed, stubbed our toes, had mud fights, wallowed, and learned from each other. And it was the cornerstone of our college application essays. Two girls into Vassar, one to Mount Holyoke, and me to Colorado College, on mud.
Colleges care about what kids care about. They want you to account for your time. They don’t care what you do; they want to know why it matters to you.
A while back, we had a boy enter Browning in Form V, so in May the family gathered to talk about college. Sitting in a semi-circle in front of my desk, dad was on the left, mom on the right, and the young man squarely in front of me. Dad peppered me with all the appropriate questions about the process while the lanky, blonde lad sat somewhat sheepishly, listening with intent. Then dad asked: “So, Mr. Pelz, what should he do over the summer?”
I responded as I always do in this scenario; I looked straight at the son and asked: “What would you like to do?” The question caught the boy by surprise. He looked up at me with a cautious grin that announced: “Why are you asking me?” I held my gaze, encouraging a response, at which point he perked up and replied, somewhat timidly but with palpable excitement: “Well, we have this house in Connecticut, and I always wanted to build one of those stone walls.” Without hesitation and with bold enthusiasm I commanded, (a dozen years before it became a charged political statement): “Build the wall!” I quickly added: “But get yourself a marble notebook.” (This was before iPads!) “Make notes every day. Like ‘This old guy has been walking past me every afternoon and today he stopped and asked me what I was doing.’ Or ‘I had a terrible time placing this one stone. It didn’t seem to want to line up properly, no matter what I did.’ And have a camera so you can add a picture. It will be terrific fodder for an essay.”
Dad paused, then asked whether the young man should get a job or an internship, or take a course somewhere. I said he should build the wall. We wandered off to a different topic, but a few minutes later, the father asked again about summer activities. I reiterated: he should build the wall. He could also get a job or study or volunteer, but, I emphasized, “Colleges care about what kids care about.”
And so, in the opening paragraph of my letter of recommendation, I was able to write that the boy “has spent much of the last few summers painstakingly designing and building a stone wall. With characteristic patience and precision, he has gathered, sorted, and arranged countless numbers of rocks, transforming them with his mind and his muscle into a formidable structure.”
I ran into him a year ago, sadly at the funeral of one of his classmates. He greeted me with a gleam in his eye and said, with enormous pride: “You know, Mr. Pelz, I’m still working on that wall!” Colleges care about what kids care about.
This summer, the world is upside down. Plans are out the window. “What can I do, Mr. Pelz?” The answer is simple: “something.” Be curious. Be creative. Have fun. Find something that interests you and explore it. There are no “right answers” or “right activities.” Actually, there never have been. What you do doesn’t matter. Why you do it does. So does how you do it; with enthusiasm, excitement, commitment, and determination; qualities wrapped up in the word “grit,” which, as our school motto, we spell “Grytte.”
