This past year, my Google Calendar was so congested that sometimes the color-coded monster would bring me to tears. At the end of this past spring semester, I believed going home to Kennesaw for the summer would follow the same pattern. I thought I was going to be extremely busy with work and never have time for myself. At least, that’s what I believed would happen until the unthinkable happened—I couldn’t land a summer job to save my life.

I know what you’re thinking. “Wow this kid has nothing going for him, he had no job, no internship, no goals #wut?”

Believe it or not, I was telling myself the same things. I thought I was hopeless and would end up on the couch cradling a jar of Nutella to compensate for the massive amount of failure I collected. I was living every day like an episode of “Phineas and Ferb” waking up and asking myself, “Jeff, what are we gonna do today?” and for someone as type-a as I am, this question would bring me on the brink of a panic attack. Breakdowns aside, this summer did show me something that no job, internship or class could have ever taught me: sometimes it’s okay to do nothing.

By stepping back and taking a break, I was able to learn so many different things about myself that I was never able to see before.

· I learned that Netflix has a wonderful selection of indie movies, and that you can never rewatch your favorite TV series too many times.

· I learned that I’m no longer the person I was before my freshman year, and I couldn’t be happier.

· I learned that while your friends from home may not have changed as much as you, they will still be there for you in your darkest hours.

· I learned that new friends from school are just a FaceTime call away, and that the distance can make your friendship even stronger.

· I learned that sometimes it’s okay to sleep for 13 hours and stay up until four in the morning.

· And I learned that after leaving for college, I will never be able to live with my parents again.

With my sophomore year crawling closer, this will probably be the last chance I will be able to sit and blatantly do nothing. So while my summer may not have been spent abroad or interning at a major publication, I know that my time doing nothing was well worth it.

Licciardello is a sophomore multimedia journalism major from Kennesaw. He is the current Magazines Editor-in-Chief.