Cate Roser

What would you change if you knew you were going to die at 26? 

Lately, I’ve taken to asking this question whenever I can bring it up in a manner that even resembles the natural flow of conversation. It’s a question impossible to answer without revealing what concessions you are making to society’s conception of a life well lived. The tension between who you are and who you ought to be is one I find fascinating. The seven or eight years that the question allots to most of my fellow first years is a sweet spot of sorts — it’s enough time to productively work towards fulfillment, but not so much that you can afford to get bogged down by less important intentions. Essentially, there’s time to plan, but no time to plan ahead. And, interestingly enough, it seems that the least awkward moment to integrate this “26 question” into conversation is when talking to people about their plans for the summer. 

Freshman summer is the culmination of a year’s worth of anxiety about having one foot in college and the other back in some nebulous amateur world. Am I possibly qualified for the internship that would have tossed my application in the trash if I had applied a year ago? Am I too old to be scooping ice cream? Am I throwing my life off course if I waste three months on something that won’t ultimately help me get where I need to be?

So, it makes sense that a question that’s ultimately asking about planning for the future would have applications in a conversation about summer plans. The ideas of investing in your future self and living in the moment intersect when you start to think about summer.

But even more than that, youth is inherent to our conception of summer in a way that cannot be isolated. The summers of childhood are marked by a desperation for momentum in a season weighed down by sweltering lassitude. A 7-year-old girl dressed half in swimsuit and half in a tutu trying to bike quickly enough down her blisteringly protracted street that she can speed the world up with her. A brother and sister careening down a roller coaster, whooshing as fast as they can through dense, soupy humidity and begging the world to try and keep up. This is what it means to be a kid in August.

Summer is introspective by nature. I always find myself thinking about death during the summer because it is the one season with time to think about those things that don’t have any practical application or propel you forwards in any way. It is three months of discombobulated contemplation — thinking the thoughts you’ve been putting off, then grappling with the reasons you’ve waited so long to think them.

So far, with my limited sample group, I’ve encountered two categories of answers to the 26 question. The first, perhaps surprisingly, is to change nothing. Almost everyone that I’ve talked to says that they would continue studying and graduate from Yale, many would keep their same major and some would even stay on their planned post-grad path. Admittedly, that last one is somewhat of a luxury and depends completely on what it is you feel called to do. Regardless, this is certainly a nice reminder that Yale exists as more than an investment into your future — there is an inherent value in being here and in learning simply for its own sake. As far as ways to maximize your time in order to self-actualize go, there aren’t many better strategies than studying at Yale.

And yet, not everyone responds this way. However I may feel about it, there’s a whole host of reasons that you wouldn’t address your every existential yearning before the age of 26. Many people would pursue their less practical passions if they didn’t have a long-term future to take into consideration. Much to my chagrin, we have set up society to revolve around money and networking and noses to the grindstone — all things useful to have experience with early so you can cash them in later in life.

So, as I see it, there are two ways to apply the wisdom of the 26 question to any questions you may be facing about how to spend your summer. 

Option one: Remember that, at least as far as I know, you’re not going to die at 26. Although I disagree with conventional wisdom that it is always worthwhile to forfeit instant gratification in hopes of a greater payoff later on, inversely, there is also no good reason to set yourself up for failure on your 27th birthday.

Option two: In a way, when it comes to summer, you’re dying much earlier than 26. If you’re in college, there’s a dwindling number of summers left before the weight of the world’s expectations land squarely on your shoulders and that ever-present ‘return-on-investment’ mindset that seeps sooner or later into education begins to charge interest. I contend that there’s a value to sitting with and reveling in your youth before it’s passed you by.

In fact, the looming loss of young summers — of that saturated, heady rumination — might be urgent enough that it’s worth forgoing that grown-up notion of planning ahead to just sit, for a little while longer, in the slowness.