Don’t go home to your parent’s house over the summer. I know – rent is a lot cheaper when you don’t have to pay it, but think of what you’re giving up. Is it really worth the questions? “What are you going to do when you graduate?”, “Did you meet anyone at school?”, “Why are you on the Internet/your phone so much?”, “Wanna help me fix the back porch? (For the next six hours)”, and so on. Terrible idea. Tough love time: your relationship with your parents hasn’t changed, it’s just been on vacation.
That was what I did after my first year at university – went back to my parent’s house. I can’t tell you how many chores were suddenly invented as a result of my presence. It reached crescendo one day when my dad said: “Wow, you know – we’re getting so much extra stuff done with you here!”
Don’t go home. For a better idea, if you can do it, stay in Peterborough.
My first summer in Peterborough (that I foolishly waited until after second year to attend) was one of those life-changing summer of 69-ish, “those were the days” summers of wonder. In large part I think it was the sheer contrast between the concrete and snow of the regular school year. In the summer, Peterborough is gorgeous – the trees are all out, and everyone is happy and relaxed and basically everything Peterborough isn’t during the school year when your nose is down in a textbook or a beer.
Where we are now, in the Spring, the snow turns to mud and dog poop just in time for all students to flee. You come back just in time to see all the green leaves suicide from their trees, yelling “goodbye the summertime of my life” and leap from their branches. Without the summer here, you only see Peterborough when it’s dying and when it’s dead. The summer in Peterborough – the relaxed beast that it is, sleeping in the sunshine – is kind of the point of Peterborough. Otherwise you go full concrete jungle and snow straight into preserved high school room and right back to chill-approaching Fall. No. I encourage you: no.
In the summer Trent Radio is also a new beast – and this is where I tell you to get involved.
I want to share with you something that happens going into the summer at Trent Radio – chaos! Absolute, unapologetic chaos! The broadcast schedule is destroyed, and it remains so until we come up with an entirely new summer schedule, with completely different programmes.
If you’re reading this Jane Doe (or John Doe, or Jor-El Doe or whatever Doe you identify as) then you can host your own show over the summer on a topic that interests you.
There feels to me nothing more Peterboro-ish in this city than having a picnic on the Trent Radio lawn facing George Street, watching some long-haired person you only just met singing into a microphone and playing guitar, and the whole thing being broadcast onto the radio, traffic noise and all. That’s “Radio On the Lawn”, every summer. That’s the kind of stuff that happens. Awesome summer stuff.
Summers in Peterborough are great. Summers at Trent Radio; even greater.
Programme Proposals for the summer season are due Sunday April 12 at noon at Trent Radio House. You can get a blank proposal at Trent Radio House or online at trentradio.ca.
Questions? Concerns? Just ask me, I’ll tell you how great a summer can be.
