The NewCanaanite.com Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Baskin-Robbins, Connecticut Sandwich Co., Joe’s Pizza and Mackenzie’s.
With the next school year starting up in just over a month, NewCanaanite talked with four rising seniors to hear about how they are spending their final summers as high school students. Here’s what they had to say:
Mike Schulte is spending his summer working as an intern at Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx. Photo contributed by Mike Schulte
Mike Schulte, ’15
From Mike in an e-mail:
“I am taking part in an internship at Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx this summer. I work in the cardiology lab and focus primarily on the genetic components responsible for various cardiac diseases including Long QT syndrome. I enjoy spending my time off with family and friends. Summer is a time to recuperate from the busy school year and I feel it is best spent with people you like. Although the summer is not yet over, I foresee myself not being able to get away for more than a weekend. With a jam-packed schedule it’s hard to take serious time off and leave the Greater New York City Area. I am hopeful that my senior year vacations will be well-spent.”
Katie Means is working at Wee Burn Country Club in the tennis pro shop. Photo contributed by Katie Means
Katie Means, ’15
From Katie in an e-mail:
“I work at Wee Burn Country Club in the tennis pro shop. I sell tennis merchandise to members, schedule lessons, recruit kids for matches, teach the campers (kids between ages 5 and 9), and I help with the store’s accounting.
Any time I am not working, you can usually find me with friends or family. While I may not get a lot of time to myself, to me it’s worth it. I’m very close with my family and I love spending time with them, and I’m the same way with friends. Considering a lot of my friends are only in New Canaan for short periods of time between international excursions, spending time with them is an infrequent and precious activity. Especially because it is the last full summer I’ll have with these friends, with no interruptions from orientation or other college business, I want to make the most of it and have a really good time with my friends before senior year starts.
Unfortunately, while I love having my own money to spend, one of the biggest drawbacks to having a job is a lack of free time. So while I can spend time with my friends at night after work, I can’t do things that require me to take a lot of days off. I’m currently writing this from Orlando, where I’ll be for the next few days with a friend at Disney World, but that’s pushing it. I wanted to do a pre-college program at Brown University, but seeing as the program was three weeks starting in July and ending in August, I wouldn’t have been able to do both that and maintain my job. As well, I wanted to go to China to work at the China Care home in Beijing (I’m a CO-president of the New Canaan High School China Care Club) but that would’ve been a two week trip in late June/early July, so that was another sacrifice I had to make to keep my job.
My summer, while hectic and perhaps not as travel filled as I would like, is what I make of it, so my goal is to just have the most fun with what I can do, instead of spending time pining after the things I cannot.”
Charlie tells me about his summer on a bench on the patio outside of Starbucks. Photo Credit: Alex Hutchins
Charlie Sosnick, ’15
“After school got out I sort of hung around and did some writing. Specifically comedy writing that I’ve been trying to catch up on. I went to Alaska for two weeks with a group and did a lot of hiking, sea kayaking, and some ice climbing which was really incredible. Right now I’m doing a little more hanging around and then in a week or so I will be going to Chicago to Second City to do some improv classes. I don’t really feel the pressure of hanging out with friends because I go back to school in a month and a half and I will see them everyday at school. Of course I like to hang out with my friends during the summer and I do it a lot but I don’t feel any rush to spend time with them, maybe next year when people start to go off to college, but I know I have the entire school year still and I think I’m just going to be hanging around and working next summer anyway so it doesn’t feel like I’m wrapping it up any time soon. I also feel it’s very hard to get motivated in the summer. A lot of times when I’m sitting around at home there’s stuff I feel I should be doing or would like to be doing in terms of college prep stuff or any personal projects that I need to work on. And it’s quite difficult to get started on those in the summer. I’m looking forward to the school year, though. I’m sure the first semester is going to be stressful but I think as a whole it’s going to be very fun so I’m looking forward to that. I feel like this summer especially there are a lot of things like college prep that are very easy to get caught up in and you end up watching your summer fly by you, so I’m just trying to live in the moment and enjoy it.”
Kyla Persky showing local Malawians some pictures on her camera that she took while working in their village. Photo contributed by Kyla Persky
Kyla Persky, ’15
From Kyla in an e-mail:
“This summer I’m attending a couple of soccer clinics, fundraising for an organization called BuildOn (the one I went to Malawi, Africa with), volunteering as a tutor for ESL students with an organization called NeighborLink, and coaching at the NCHS Soccer Clinic for elementary school girls. Also, as I mentioned above, I have just returned from a 10-day trek to Malawi during which we built a second school in a village a couple hours away from where we built the first one last summer. During this time, we stayed with host families, attended cultural workshops, learned some of the language (Chichewa), and taught a couple of lessons to some primary school students. By the time we left, the village was four days ahead of schedule with regard to construction, something we actively participated in during our time there, doing everything from carrying sand, to mixing cement, to making windows, to digging the foundation and latrine, to placing bricks, and more. I am very fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time traveling with my family this summer. I went to my club soccer team’s National Playoffs in Seattle with my mom, and I will be flying out to Greece and Istanbul with her and my sister in the beginning of August. I absolutely love being able to spend time with my siblings and my parents, and we definitely make the most of what little time we have.
While much of my summer is going to be “play”, there’s plenty of “work” to be done. I have clubs and teams to run, summer assignments to complete for my classes, senior activities to plan, and a critical soccer recruiting decision to make.