Week 9

Working 5 days a week, 8 hours a day here at Fairway for 10 weeks of the summer and tunneling my way through the 40ish weeks of school per year at Northwestern are strikingly different undertakings that require completely different mental (and perhaps physical) resources and are taxing in their own wholly unique ways. But in my three years of college and my one summer at Fairway, one of the largest challenges I’ve encountered that happens to be common to both enterprises is simply sitting still—be it in a lecture hall listening to a professor drone on for an hour and 20 minute class or at an office desk for 8 consecutive hours, occasionally going cross-eyed from computer-glare.

If I have to pick the more difficult of the two—school or work—I might have to choose the latter, simply because it’s so radically different from what I’m accustomed to. Sure, classes at Northwestern pose their own challenges and obstacles and are time consuming to the nth degree. I don’t think I’ve ever gone to bed before 1am during the school year and here at Fairway, I’m snuggled under my covers at 11pm on the dot every night. But somehow, despite slumbering for a solid 8 hours every night vs. 6 hours—sometimes less—on a school night, I find myself even more tired at work. Maybe this is because I’m not moving around from class to home to class to extracurricular and back again (and I can’t just put my head down on my desk here to take a quick cat-nap in the same way that I can run home for a 20 minute snooze between classes). I think fresh air is also a huge part of being rejuvenated throughout the day. Even in negative degree, torrential rain, blizzard, or sweltering conditions (whatever weather Chicago’s temperamental mother nature decides on for the day), it’s always refreshing to walk (or run, depending on my tardiness) through the great outdoors, to or from my next class or activity.

The time I've spent here at Fairway has been wonderful, enlightening, and above all an immense learning experience for me—I’ve met new and interesting people, grown to understand what I do and don’t enjoy in an occupation, and have acquired new skills and knowledge that I might never have explored had I not been accepted as an intern here. And I’m sure that once I’m back in the full, stressful, whirlwind swing of academic life, coupled with job applications, extracurriculars, and the rushed, bittersweet senior-year-ness of it all, I will have a different mindset about present and past challenges; if someone asks the same question of me—which do I find more difficult, work or school?—I will probably respond, without a moment’s hesitation: school. The grass is always greener on the other side, isn’t it?