Stack of books including Untangled by Lisa Damour, Four Thousand Weeks, Braiding Sweetgrass, and Hope for Cynics beside a pink clock and reading glasses on a sage green desk

Summer Shouldn’t Become Another Performance Season

By Dot Kowal | May 26, 2026

As summer approaches, it can be tempting to think of these months as something to optimize. Take the class. Find the internship. Add the activity. Build the résumé.

But that is not how I hope students think about summer.

Summer matters, yes — but not because it needs to be jam-packed with meaningful activities. It matters because it offers something the school year rarely does: space. Space to rest. Space to reconnect with family and friends. Space to try something new. Space to work, volunteer, train, read, wander, recover, and be present.

The Pie Chart Exercise

One exercise I often do with students is a simple summer pie chart. I ask them to sketch out how they want their time to feel and where they want their energy to go. How much of the summer should be rest? Family time? Friend time? Volunteering? Academic enrichment? Athletic training? A job? Travel? Creative work?

Nothing fancy. Just a visual way to pause and ask:

What do I want this summer to be for?

Hand-drawn pie chart on a notebook titled 'Summer Plan' showing segments: 34% Family + Friends, 32% School, 20% Rest/Organizing, 10% Volleyball, 2% Other.

Notice what this student has done. The biggest slice is family and friends, at 34%. Rest is another 20%. More than half the summer is devoted to relationships and recovery — and that may be the most important thing on the page. School prep is there too, taking up about a third. Volleyball gets its 10%. There is even a small slice marked “other?” because some things are still undecided, and that is allowed.

The pie chart is not a contract. It is a way of pausing long enough to ask: What do I actually want this summer to be for?

Intentionality Is the Whole Thing

For high school students, intentionality is the key. Without it, summer can slip away in a blur of good intentions, screen time, last-minute plans, and vague pressure. With a little reflection, students can make choices that feel more aligned — maybe one meaningful academic experience, one consistent responsibility, one way to contribute to the community, and plenty of room to breathe.

A good summer does not have to impress anyone. It should help a student return to school in the fall a little more grounded and connected.

That last part matters more than any single activity on the page.

Something to Try

Hand your child a piece of paper and ask them to draw their own summer pie chart. Don’t coach. Don’t edit. Just see what they put on the page.

Then look at it together and ask:

Does this feel like the summer you actually want?

The conversation that follows is usually the whole point.