Chapter 1: Summer Vacation is Nearly Over
Sazae-san syndrome. Have you heard that term before? Simply put, it’s the depression that sinks in when you start watching Sazae-san on Sunday evening and realize that tomorrow is Monday. Students often feel similarly depressed near the end of summer vacation. They start saying things like, “I wish summer went on longer,” or, “But I wanted more time to relax,” and so on.
I don’t agree. The years of your life when you can freely do what you want are essentially limited to the time when you’re in school. If we suppose, for argument’s sake, that you retired at sixty, the earliest possible age, and entered the workforce at eighteen, that would mean you worked for forty-two years—a significantly longer period than the twelve years between elementary school and graduating high school. During those forty-two years, society would restrict your freedoms. Some people even end up stuck working after they reach retirement age.
Of course, there are also people who live outside these restrictions. Some are born to rich parents, while others might have great entrepreneurial skill. Shortcuts to success do exist, but the chances of lucking into such a position are as slim as winning the lottery. In the end, most people spend more than half their lives continuously making sacrifices for society.
From a social perspective, simply being a student is like enjoying an endless summer vacation. However, many students become adults without appreciating this fact, only to look back on those times once they reach their thirties and forties and think of how much fun they had.
This is a selection of vignettes about students wavering in that space between childhood and adulthood.
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