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Letter From The U.H.
Presenting...
The U.H.’s Hot Tips for
Completely Wasting Your Summer!
Summer break begins for Raggants a few days from now, but it’s not too early to be thinking about how you can optimize your regret for how you squandered the precious twelve weeks between June 7 and September 4. Effective slothfulness takes some planned neglect, and some of you need help being lazy. The Unruly Headmaster is here for you!
Before I offer my list of hot tips for wasting your summer, it’s important to remember that undergirding all these recommendations is a principle of selfishness. Do your best to make your decisions based on what is in your best immediate interest. When in doubt, do whatever you want, and trust that others will pick up your slack (or your Kleenex) whether now or in the fall. Make sense? Good.
Now, as promised, here are the U.H.’s Hot Tips for Completely Wasting Your Summer!
Tip #1: Sleep In Every Day
The school year is brutally stable. Week in, week out, it’s the same schedule. This summer you’re freed from the shackles of school bells. Sleep is sweet, and you’ve earned what’s coming to you over the last nine months. So unplug that alarm clock, turn on the white noise app on your iPod, program the DVR to record anything you might accidentally sleep through, draw those heavy blackout curtains, and catch some Z’s. You deserve it.
While you’re at it, this is a great time to become the night owl you’ve always wanted to be. Staying up late has its allure. Once the sun finally sets around here, it’s a great time to start a movie, right? Just think about how many movies you could get through if you practiced this discipline this summer. That takes us to our next point….
Tip #2: Take a Break from Reading
The reading load many of you face during the school year is downright oppressive. So much mental stimulation can hardly be good for a young brain. Fiction? Too much conflict and adventure. History? Too much irrelevant information from a past that probably doesn’t pertain to you anyway. Theology? Boooriiiing! Take a break from reading. It requires a lot of mental energy, and you’ve probably exhausted your supply for the year though it’s barely June! This is your time to build up your attention stores that you’ll need to draw on again in the fall.
A wise alternative is the television. It is far less mentally-demanding than reading; you can passively receive information while reading requires actual mental initiative. It’s possibly your mental muscles may atrophy a bit before September, but it’s okay! You can start building them back up some other time! That’s what school is for, right?
Tip #3: Abstain from Work
The misguided and industrious among us look at the summer weeks as offering more time to get projects done, to make repairs on the house, or to build and produce. The poor simpletons have it all backward. This is a time to rest, and I don’t mean the occasional recuperation and recovery that humans normally need to operate at a high level. This is prime time to log some serious R&R minutes. So do your best to work as little as possible.
In the Pacific Northwest, the summers are glorious; you can rest in the sun or the shade, inside or out! The anti-work options are limitless. To help us out, it’s peak movie season, so hit the theaters. Or hit the hammock. Or hit the remote control. Stock up on paper plates now so you don’t have to hit the dishes later. You’ll probably get fat, so you may want to pick up plenty of stretchy pants (enough to last you the summer without having to do any laundry).
This is YOUR time. Don’t forget that. Work is largely for others; summer is for you.
While there are infinite ways to squander the coming weeks, I trust you'll find this short list helpful. You're welcome to email me with your own ideas, but, you know, I may not read that email until the fall.
Risus est bellum!
Jonathan
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