The summer is more than halfway over, and classmates have begun the countdown to when they get to return to Tuck. Excitement of returning is currently overwhelming the growing sense of foreboding that comes with entering the second—and final—year. As a lover of puns (just ask my classmates), I note that the second year at Tuck is the ultimate year. What, beyond it being the final year, makes it ultimate? The opportunity to spend another year in the wonderland that is the Upper Valley should be sufficient enough, but I am looking forward to hanging out with classmates, taking more control over my path at Tuck by selecting electives, and living life at a (hopefully) calmer pace than my internship.
If you are reading this post and are both a T'15 and gainfully employed, please give yourself a break from the hustle and bustle before arriving in Hanover! You need time to relax and decompress, and the pre-orientation and orientation programs are busy. One classmate left her job the day before orientation began and found that there was insufficient time to move in (like getting a driver’s license or switching car registration)—be sure to take time.
Life at Tuck will be as busy as you want to make it. There is always something to do, more preparation work to do for class, one more reading (optional or otherwise) that you could do, one more club to join. Draw boundaries and identify what is truly important to you. This is not only possible at Tuck, but in your summer internship. I came to Tuck wanting to switch careers from government contracting into management consulting, so the summer internship is very important to me. At the same time, I had made a commitment years earlier to staff the Boy Scout National Jamboree, which is a 2.5-week commitment in the middle of July. I was fortunate to get an offer from a Big 3 firm; as I had feared, there was a conflict with the dates (given the timing of the Jamboree, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion). Though anxious, I explained the nature of my commitment and its importance to me to my employer; much to my surprise, they respected my commitment (a boundary, if you will) and developed a schedule that allowed me to have a meaningful internship and participate in this meaningful event. If I had not asked, if I had not drawn the boundary, I would have regretted it.
Hopefully these two pieces of advice resonate—you will be busy soon enough, so take the opportunity now to relax!