Finding Your Summer Routine
The semester ends, the school work disappears, and suddenly the schedule that used to run your life is gone. No more 9 a.m. lectures forcing you to get out of bed to get ready for the day, that routine is no longer existent. For a lot of students, myself included, summer can go from relaxing to boring fairly quickly. It is good to have structure in the summer, but you don’t need a packed schedule to feel grounded. If you’re staying on campus for work, summer classes, or just sticking around Kingston for the season, that feeling can become even stronger. Here are some ways to build your summer routine and how Campus Rec can help you do it.
When the urge to fix everything at once kicked in, a new diet, new sleep schedule, new everything, I had to remind myself that wasn’t realistic. What I could do was pick one thing at a time. For some that could be simply showing up at the Anna Fascitelli Fitness & Wellness Center a few days a week. For others it could be going for a morning swim in the Tootell Aquatic Center. No matter what it may be, build everything else around that one non-negotiable, and the rest of your routine will fall into place behind it.
Once you have that one thing locked in, the next problem that usually comes up is what to do once you’re there. This is something I run into all the time. I’d walk into the gym and spend more time deciding on a workout than actually doing one. This is where group fitness classes come in clutch. Rhody Rec runs great workout classes throughout the week where you can sign up using IMLeagues. Rotating through a few classes took the guesswork out completely, and I started seeing the same people each week, that sense of accountability made it a lot harder to skip.
Another thing that’s helped me is taking the routine outside instead of keeping it stuck inside one building. The bike path offers beautiful scenery and a relaxing vibe while walking, running, or biking. There is also always time to try something new, the Sailing Center runs adult sailing programs all summer out on Narragansett Bay. It sounds intimidating, but everyone has to start somewhere. There are also paddleboards and kayaks to take out if that is more your speed.
What I found was that I didn’t need a perfect plan for the summer. What I needed was a few consistent things that I could count on, and Campus Rec was the center of all of them. I stopped trying to overhaul my entire life and started to look at what I had right in front of me, that turned out to be enough. If you’re in Kingston this summer and feeling that post finals drift, come find your thing at Campus Rec. Remember, it doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be yours. We hope to see you at the gym, pool, or out on the Bay!
By: Megha Sud
Graduating: May 2028
Major: Communications