While attending college in upstate New York, I never expected to be able to experience an 80-degree day near the beginning of April, but today, April 13, the temperature reached 83 and the UV index peaked at eight. If you were touring campus or just walking throughout St. Bonaventure the past few days, you could find students tanning and doing homework outside in any grassy area on campus. The vibes were immaculate and everyone was trying to soak up as much sun as possible because living in New York, it could be snowing next week. Here was my itinerary today as I tried to take advantage of the weather.
I woke up at 9 a.m. like I do every morning and I put on shorts and a short sleeve shirt knowing that the weather was supposedly going to be about 70 degrees. I left my room and went to Starbucks for a pink drink with vanilla sweet cream cold foam (definitely recommend) before I headed off to my 10 a.m. philosophy class which happened to be my only class of the day. After leaving my class, I headed to an 11:30 a.m. conference to discuss my upcoming English paper and by noon, I was ready to get outside.
My friends and I all met outside behind our dorm building where the sun hit perfectly and we worked on homework, listened to music, read our books (I’m currently reading “She’s Up To No Good” by Sara Goodman Confino), and tanned since we hadn’t seen the sun in so long. More and more of our friends started to join us and after two hours of laying on our towels and blankets, we borrowed Spike Ball from our recreation center and played a few games until about 3 p.m. The thought of jumping into a lake or pool started to seem so refreshing considering how long we had been outside and we decided to move our fun to the Allegany State Park.
We headed to Walmart for more sunscreen, snacks, and Subway for dinner on the go and then drove about 20 minutes to Allegany State Park where there is a lake and beach area and for the next few hours we continued to tan, go into the lake and jump off the dock. The water was extremely cold but we didn’t even care because of how much we missed the summer.
After hours of being in the sun, we were exhausted and decided to head back to campus for dinner. My friends and I went to Freshens, a dining option on campus, to get smoothies and salads to conclude our day. After a long day of being outside and absorbing the sun we were all burnt out and I went to bed rather early.
It was days like today that make me enjoy college and get me so hyped up for the summer which before seemed so far away but after today, it doesn’t seem so far.