Worshipping the Idol of Idle Idylls

The pall of summer looms, surreal, as we endure winter in our cold corner of Cambridge. But summer's specter beckons, despite its distance, and we scramble to places like the Office of Career Services and Off-Campus Learning, embarking on the search--the search for The Job, The Experience, The Money, or The Diversion.

Think: you too could "run thymidine kinase assay on enzyme preparation from selected cell samples;" you too could be a fire watcher, a book salesman, a horticultural trainee, a budget analyst, or a summer civil servant.

Then, consider the conventional routes to success, fame and glamor. "One quarter of all Harvard undergraduates want to be president," a prominent administrator said recently. A conservative estimate, perhaps. While the Oval Office may be a nice place to spend the summer, contemporary trends indicate Harvard types may encounter stumbling blocks on the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Primaries and polls should not discourage--after all, five undergrads did make it to the White House. Furthermore, a plethora of opportunities exist in the public sector. Banking, business, and publication jobs help round out the resume. But you can extirpate buried treasures, excavate unusual occupations, spend the idle ideas of summer idyllically, bask in the warm reassurance that yes, you have found the fount of summer happiness.

Maybe.

A word about working as a teller in a bank: don't. Not unless you like to file, unfile, and refile everyday. Not unless you enjoy counting pennies by the hundreds. Not unless a combination of low wages and stifling conditions allures you. Don't.

Instead, set up your own business. The word to remember a few years back was "plastics." The new word for the wise is "energy." Sell insulation; adjust furnaces. Wealth will follow closely, a fortune cookie might say.

One student's search for the ideal summer will take him to Albequerque, N.M., this June as a public relations staffer for a minor league baseball team. Pay: $100 a week. But, the student adds, a chance to watch a lot of baseball.

Another student will ranch in Montana. Another will travel on a freighter up and down the East coast; another will travel to Europe on a tuna boat.

Many undergraduates will latch onto some kind of research work for a professor or in a lab. A handful will fill research assistant positions overseas. Some never get enough research. The search becomes research. Research, research, indoors, libraries, file cards, papers, research. All the best.

Others display greater imagination when conducting their search. One friend mingled work and pleasure into perhaps the ultimate melange. For six weeks, he toiled as a pipefitter's assistant for the princely, Baybank-crisp wage of $9.90 an hour. For the rest of the summer, he sailed around the world. Other lucrative offerings not to be sneered at: the assembly line at General Motors ($8.00 an hour), the meat-processing department at Fenway Franks ($8.50 an hour), and computer work, which ranges in wage from $10 to $15 an hour.

A steel mill, a pulp and paper mill, or a nuts and bolts factory sharpen perspective and brighten the bankroll. "It brought me in closer touch with the proletariat and at the same time made me wealthy," said one sophomore who worked at a factory last year and managed to reconcile theory and praxis.

Some prefer to vend. Hock hats and sell souvenirs at an amusement park (and see if your tutorial helps you unload $30 stuffed animals to saturated fairgoers). Work for the Fuller Brush people. Earn commissions, seek out customers, play the stock market, start a lemonade and orange juice stand, diversify, accumulate, acquire....

If the unbridled search for profit does not appeal to your aesthetic sensibilities, get back to nature. Try forestry, or an archaeological dig, or a canoe trip. You will return to-school less preoccupied with life's petty pursuits.

***

But the search will continue. Between winter's summer hopes and summer's wintry reality fall expectations. Nothing will satiate; nothing will wax devoid. It's only 12 weeks in the real world, unless you're a senior, in which case summer takes on new meaning.

Remember the manifold possibilities--if the thought of running thymidine kinase assay on enzyme preparation enthralls you, by all means go for it. Summers are too spare to squander; soon, its surreal quality will dissipate in a thick breeze. The files at OCS-OCL will translate into experience, grafted, crafted and carved by those who leaf through the binders. Aspire to a tome; accept a novelette. Hope that the thick breeze never loses its consequence, and never eschew the search