Even if you’re not a big Jason Robert Brown fan (and/or Ohioan), you’ve possibly still heard Anna Kendrick belt out “A Summer in Ohio” from The Last Five Years at some point in your life. In the song, her character Cathy details a long list of experiences she finds comparable to spending her summer in Ohio, including but not limited to: a root canal in hell, an ice pick in one’s eye, and eating fish from last July. Hearing this may cause you to wonder: why on earth do so many Oberlin students choose to spend the summer here? And what are we all doing?
I, for one, have been working for the Office of Residential Life as a summer housing assistant (HA). This entails being an RA for summer residents as well as working on the conference services team-- helping out with housing and various other needs for the conferences who use Oberlin’s facilities during the summer. If you’re (1) looking for a summer job and want to stay in Oberlin, and (2) a person who enjoys physical activity and walking around campus, you might like being an HA. Pros: it comes with free housing for the summer in either Firelands or Union-Goldsmith, and a meal plan for when the dining halls are open (which isn’t all summer, but a fair majority of it). The office of Reslife is honestly more fun than most people give them credit for-- we recently got to go to Cedar Point as an office while on the clock. My favorite part of the job has definitely been getting to know and bonding with my coworkers (there are ten student HAs in total). We’ve spent a lot of time together this summer on Azariah’s runs and hanging out outside of work. Cons: it’s a lot of physical labor, and can be intense during the busy months. That’s what I’ve been doing in Oberlin this summer (in addition to working at For Ewe), but I know the majority of people who stick around are doing summer research. There are also some summer library jobs, and I have a friend working for the ID card office.
As far as what Oberlin itself is like during the summer, it does sort of feel like a ghost town. With all of the college students gone, things are very, very quiet. Campus is a totally different vibe than during the school year or even winter term, when there are always people out walking around and having fun. The whole small-town feel you experience during the school year intensifies tenfold. On the other hand, the quiet is peaceful. Walking around Oberlin at night in the summer is the most tranquil I’ve ever seen campus. It’s beautiful and still and lovely. The other thing about the temporarily smaller community is that it’s also a tighter-knit community. For example, some of my coworkers formed a trivia team with a couple of Oberlin professors and go every week. They’ve gotten to know a lot of townies this way and had a lot of fun doing it. Pretty much all of the students still in town go to the Feve on Long Island nights. The town also puts on a summer music series in Tappan Square. Reslife hosts summer resident events-- movie nights, ice cream socials, a summer makers' market, and stargazing in Peters observatory, to name a few. Point being, there are still people to see and things to do (though I cannot stress enough how much you will want to have a car on campus if you stick around for summer).
A summer in Oberlin is definitely something to consider if any of this appeals to you. Spending time in town without the college in session has given me a newfound appreciation for the town itself, and also for the extra liveliness that the college students add to it during the school year. I’m very much looking forward to campus filling up again.
