Three weeks ago, I was in UNC&squo;s summer school, taking classes in math and hip hop ‐ one of the world&squo;s most useful subjects (hip hop) paired with one of the more inane and pointless ones (math). The point is that I had stuff to do. I had homework, tests to study for, hip hop albums to listen to…and now I have nothing.Before you decry me and complain that I&squo;ve been doing nothing for three weeks, allow me to retort. That charge is simply untrue ‐ I have been doing things, I just haven&squo;t done anything useful.

Much of my time has been spent riding my bike around various routes in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area, waking up at noon (11 if I&squo;m feeling ambitious), attending

various concerts, watching Shark Week, going record shopping, and learning how to bounce a golf ball off of my lob wedge multiple times just like Tiger Woods did in that one Nike commercial a few years back.Again, this seems like an ideal existence, a life of complete and total leisure.&bsp; Well, you&squo;re wrong. It&squo;s boring and it&squo;s slowly driving me insane.&bsp; I&squo;ve literally been dreaming of the day when I get to wake up at 7 a.m. and go to class and learn, because it will also be the day that I accomplish something non-stupid. See how much this is affecting me? My brain is turning into mush to the degree that I can&squo;t even think of an antonym for the word stupid.&bsp; Oy vey.Anyway, all this leisure has got me considering the difference between living in a college town during the summer versus living in a college town during the school year, and the difference, to paraphrase Marcel Proust, is ginormous. In many ways, Chapel Hill in the summer is much like Tryon or Landrum, only with more bars and fewer antique shops. There&squo;s one main street where there are a bunch of shops and businesses, and then the surrounding area s residential. It&squo;s a pretty peaceful and sleepy little town that, much like a volcano, erupts with college students for eight months every year (which I guess makes it very dissimilar to a volcano, but I&squo;m no rocket surgeon).When all the college kids get back, that&squo;s when things tend to get set on fire more often. Starting in late August, Friday evening suddenly shifts from being a nice night to have a stroll to the ice cream parlor into a night where you&squo;re afraid to leave your house because ou will invariably be lost in a sea of college kids all trying to get into the same five bars. Simply put, Chapel Hill during the school year becomes overcrowded and I don&squo;t know how the city council manages it; they should at least add some more streets onto the town or something. It&squo;s pure and utter bedlam.So I guess you could say I&squo;m conflicted about going back to school. On the one hand, I&squo;m supremely bored, and on the other hand, I&squo;m not ready to re-enter the world of crazy that automatically comes with going to school here.&bsp; I guess what I should just do is come back to Columbus and commute.&bsp; A 4-hour drive to school isn&squo;t that bad, is it?