There are a lot of adjustments to make after graduating Penn.
The hardest? Coming to terms with the fact that you will never have another summer vacation.
It was a nice run while it lasted, of course. Like a lot of Penn students, I imagine, I kept pretty busy in between the school years before college.
I spent 10-plus summers going off to sleep-away camp, one summer traveling to Poland and Israel and another studying film and Judaism at Brandeis University.
Then came college, and, suddenly, summer wasn't just about unwinding - it became about building a resume.
The decision wasn't just about how I wanted to spend my summer (poolside with a good book if I had my druthers), but about spending my summer in a way that would prepare me for the future.
But preparing oneself for the future doesn't always means waltzing down Wall Street.
My summer after freshman year, I hadn't made any serious plans. So when a friend asked me to help her staff a teen tour for United Synagogue Youth, I figured, why not? For six weeks I traveled through almost 30 states with more than 40 teenagers.
I don't know what was more difficult: trying to convince kids Urban Outfitters in San Francisco is no different than in Chicago or trying to get them more interested in learning about America and Judaism than just hooking up with each other.
I do know I learned a lot about patience and passion, because I needed a lot of both to get through the trip.
The next summer was even more serendipitous than the one before. Fresh off my first year as a Penn student - I had transferred that year - I hung around for a summer session in Philadelphia while desperately looking for work in California.
As my Penn peers were heading off to think tanks and banks, it looked like I was heading nowhere.
Through luck and a phone call from a family friend, I ended up in a DA's office in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Even though I didn't run off to apply to law school afterwards, the summer I spent there taught me discipline.
As for last summer, it was the anomaly. I scored my dream job as an intern for Esquire magazine and spent three months in Manhattan, immersed in the glamour (read: tedium) of editorial research, fact-checking and transcription.
While my name won't be on any mastheads just yet, the job at Esquire was invaluable in preparing me for a job in magazine journalism when I eventually decide to pursue it.
Whether staffing a cross-country teen tour, interning at the District Attorney's office in San Luis Obispoor at a men's magazine in New York City, I found plenty of ways to stay busy.
But, in case it wasn't painfully obvious, I never had much of a premeditated plan in terms of picking jobs that would help further my career.
At Penn, students are surrounded by incredibly driven and focused peers. Often, it seems like everyone knows exactly where they're going - whether it's law school, med school or Washington - and how they're getting there.
It's easy to feel overwhelmed by pressure to prepare for what comes after college. Especially when you don't know what you want to do, now or later.
But as someone who didn't know what I was doing in recent summers until the last minute - this summer included - I want to say this to anyone who can relate: It's not the end of the world.
Summer, and college in general, should not have to be about knowing what you're going to do with your life. It can and should be about figuring that out.
That's why, in three years, I did three completely different jobs that all taught me something different about myself. None of them set me on a straight path to a career, but I had fun and learned something in the process.
This summer, I found myself in familiar territory. All my friends had plans to travel the globe, relax before grad school or start their jobs.
Me? I was still deciding. Monday, I finally chose to spend my summer training for the New York City Teaching Fellows program.
I don't think I'll end up as a teacher for the rest of my life, but if I can learn something about myself and prepare for what comes after, then it'll be worth it, no matter what.
Maybe I still have something of a summer vacation after all.
Ruben Brosbe is a 2007 College alumnus from Santa Rosa, Calif. His e-mail address is rubenb@sas.upenn.edu.
