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I couldn’t have worked another summer on the cemetery mowing crew. I’d grown to know the headstones well but didn’t weep when I left them for Washington, D.C., last summer.

During my first three years of college, I grew accustomed to a rigid schedule. Semesters were time at school; summers and breaks were time at home. I enjoyed both, but by year three of the same old thing, I had become Alfred Tennyson’s Ulysses, desirous of a new world. Washington, D.C., became my happy isle.

Before I started college, a friend told me I was entering the only four-year period in my life in which I was the only person I had to worry about. It’s basically true. Few college students have spouses. Fewer still have families to provide for. 

Take advantage of this free time while you’re a student. If you pack up and move to D.C. for three months, you’ll miss your family. But you’ll gain something, too. While you may miss your hometown friends, you’ll leave the city with new friends from around the country.

If nothing else, spending a summer out of your comfort zone will be an adventure. Before last May, I had never lived more than an hour from where I grew up. So when, three days after classes ended, I transferred my whole life to the East Coast, I wasn’t sure I would make it. I survived those three months living on my own just fine — and along the way, discovered a spirit of adventure beneath my homebody tendencies. 

I spent my first Saturday alone walking the National Mall. I had been to the city twice before, but never with the freedom to go and do as I pleased. Who knew they held revivals on the mall on summer nights? 

My second Friday in D.C., I received a text from a Hillsdale roommate who said he needed help on a sales job in Annapolis, Maryland. The next morning, we found ourselves in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There, I ate authentic Korean food for the first time and met a host of people you wouldn’t believe were real. Outside the city, we made a fire and slept on the ground under the stars. And I made it home in time for work on Monday. 

Practically, spending a summer away from home widens the net for future job opportunities. There is something to be said for showing up and shaking hands. As Alexander Hamilton once said (in the Broadway musical), “You don’t get a win unless you play in the game.” So play in the game. Experience in another city, at a high-end company, or in a unique role is a golden ticket when job interviewers inevitably ask, “What sets you apart?”

As a Hillsdale student, you have plenty of time to bore yourself between September and April. Make things interesting between May and August. 

Move to a new city; take a long vacation; hit the road without a plan. Challenge yourself. You’ll be thankful for the adventure, and you’ll return home with stories for those hometown friends. In August, I drove back to Temperance, Michigan, and spent time with my family before school started. The graves hadn’t moved an inch.

Ty Ruddy is a senior studying English.