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Life > Experiences

What I Learned Staying in East Lansing This Summer

Madison Reinhold
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at MSU chapter.

An expensive lease, a summer internship, and a desperate need to get out of my (affectionately) terrible hometown led me here: in East Lansing, and never leaving. I have never liked summer, and this summer was no exception. Too hot, too repetitive, too isolated. However, staying in my college town taught me a lot about myself and my least favorite season. 

  1. Yep, I still hate summer

According to NASA, 2023 was the hottest summer on record. No matter where I was living, that wasn’t going to change. I hated breaking a sweat every second I spent outside; I hated running up my electric bill with air conditioning and noisy box fans. Additionally, I worked every single day, and my days ended up becoming just as repetitive as they usually do. At least during the school year, I have a different class every day and extracurriculars to keep things interesting and spontaneous compared to my repetitive job. I learned that I need to do at least something different every once and a while, or else it’s no different than any other summer when I wake up and relive the same day for three months. Living in East Lansing, I have the opportunity to do that. 

  1. I am a child trapped in a 21-year-old’s body

The closest place of business to my childhood home was a cow farm. It might’ve had the makings of the quaint setting of a Hallmark movie, but there wasn’t much else to do but stay home. East Lansing is by no means a big city, but after multiple years of pursuing an education there, I’m still dealing with the shock of living somewhere with multiple grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. There is more civilization here than there is back at home. So, while I am here, if I need to go to the store, I can just go. I can go to a movie. I can sit at a coffee shop and write for a few hours. So many simple things that I can’t do back home, I can just do. It isn’t a lot, but it really makes the little kid in me very happy. 

  1. I… have friends?

The plus of summer vacation was to not have to go to school anymore. The downside, however, was leaving all my friends behind. School was literally the only thing tethering me to my pathetic excuse for a social life for as long as I could remember. Without the obligation of seeing me every single weekday for nine months, friendships I made throughout the school year mostly vanished. So, summer was always an isolating time. This year, I found myself making new friends at work and keeping old friends between semesters for the first time. Having a social life to break up the repetitiveness of work was something I didn’t know I needed to make summer better. 

  1. Being a grown-up rules!

A culmination of my first three points is being able to go where I want when I want, having a job I don’t completely hate, and having friends I love; it is something I won’t ever take for granted. Maybe it was the location, maybe it was about experiencing adulthood. 

Staying in East Lansing this summer taught me a lot of things about myself. Summer is still my least favorite time of year, but this summer was far from the worst! I am excited for this upcoming school year, but it was nice not spending my break counting down the days until it would be over. Staying in my college town had a lot to do with that.

Madison Reinhold is Marketing Director, Events Assistant and Staff Writer for Her Campus at MSU. She leads the Design Team which produces content for social media as well as merch and recruitment, in addition to planning team events and contributing articles to Her Campus. Madison is a senior studying journalism with a concentration in writing, reporting, and editing, with minors in women's and gender studies and history. She also interns for MSU's Center for Gender in Global Context, creating social media content, contributing to their newsletter, and editing their department magazine. She previously interned for local non-profit The Women's Center of Greater Lansing. Additionally, she works for MSU's College of Social Science Office of Student Success, providing supplemental instruction to students. In her precious free time, Madison is attempting to write her first novel, playing fetch with her dog, Hazel, or finding a new niche history book to obsess over.