SAN MATEO, Calif.—“So, what are you doing this summer?”

I was first asked this question seated with a friend in the Eliot dining hall sometime after spring break, and I would be asked again countless times until I left Cambridge in early June.

“Um, I’m going home this summer,” I answered him then, the way I would every time someone else posed the same question.

The next few exchanges were just as predictable, as if scripted. “And where’s home?” “California.” “Oh really? Where in California?” “The Bay Area.” “Cool.” But of course, all I did was tell my friend where I was staying over the summer months, not what I would be doing. That was his next question.

“So what will you be doing?”

“Um. Nothing.”

You can probably see why I was so evasive; the fact of the matter was that, unlike many—or perhaps most—Harvard students, I had not planned to do anything substantial over the summer. This, for me, was slightly embarrassing.

Why? Here’s a quick survey of my friends’ plans for the summer:

One of my roommates is working for a Harvard chemistry professor here in Cambridge, performing sophisticated research, the comprehension of which completely escapes my scientifically-limited humanities brain.

My other roommate will be at Auburn University, doing advanced plasma research on a contraption called a Compact Toroidal Hybrid Reactor—also beyond my understanding.

I have friends going to Italy, to London, to Amsterdam. I have friends working for Let’s Go, for Summerbridge, for Harvard Student Agencies. I have friends in consulting and in i-banking.

Oh, and don’t forget the internships. From among my Crimson friends alone, there are people working for The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Daily News, CNBC, ABC News, Salon.com, Google—the list goes on.

I could continue, but I think I’ve made my point. Harvard students are ambitious, driven and very, very motivated. Whether it’s to satisfy a financial aid requirement or to pad their resumes, to gain the necessary experience on the job market or simply to do what they love doing, my peers, for the most part, seem to be of the mindset that it’s not enough to work their butts off during the school year—they have to do the same during their vacation too.

So of course I felt a little bit sheepish when I told my friend in April that I would spend the majority of my time this summer sleeping in. And considering all the really cool things that everyone else seems to be doing, who wouldn’t?

Now, this isn’t to say that I won’t be doing anything this summer. I’ll be doing what I’ve done the past two summers—freelance as a photographer for a small local newspaper in the Bay Area, putting my camera, lenses and photojournalistic skill (honed from seemingly infinite hours spent at The Crimson) to use whenever my editor needs me, typically a few hours a week.