1) Summer vacations don't happen in the real world. Shit, they don't even happen in grad school. If you are serious about having a career after college, summer is when you should be getting an internship or a job or participating in a summer program that advances you towards this goal.
2) If you've applied for one of those summer programs, you need to tell your parents that you've done so and won't be available to go on a 2-3 week family visit with them.
3) If your parents insist, you need to reevaluate your priorities. Also, your status as an adult.
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For sure they don't exist in most of corporate America-land. But America's non-relationship with real vacation is a global aberration, not the norm. We have the second-longest annual working hours in the world, after S. Korea.
The irony is that our forebears worked so hard with the goal, in part, of giving their descendants a better life. Now that we have the opportunity for said better life, far too many of us squander quality in favor of quantity.
Imagine a 30-something-year-old couple with two young children, earning a combined $120k a year. The parents get 3 weeks discretionary vacation per year. No "big" vacation there. They live in a 2,500 sf. house that has a bonus room over the garage, 3-1/2 bathrooms, a formal dining room (that they never use) and a formal living room (that they never use).
Now ask: what if you could work one month less a year? You'd have to lose a couple of the unused rooms, and maybe not have two high definition television sets?
The dollar math would work out. But would the family want to make the trade? And even if they wanted to, would their companies let them "flex" on the time?
Followup: I know my scenario isn't true for folks much below the median US incomes. But that leaves at least a third of the country working too hard for things that, in my strong opinion, give them a lot less happiness than a month's vacation would.
Yes, yes, but...I have a position to fill!!!
I completely agree with you re: the American tendency to undervalue vacation time. It's absolutely one of my main reasons for (probably) staying in academia (sabbatical, anyone?) as well as my perennial interest in emigration to a more laid back corner of the Anglosphere.
But this post is mostly me venting at someone in particular who is passing up a great opportunity because their parents won't let them grow up.
Aha. I realize that I failed to correctly interpret item 3 in your original post. "Your status as an adult" meant "you don't have to do what your parents want you to" instead of "you need to buckle down and get started on your 9 to 5", right?
Parents. Can't live with them. Can't become live without them :-)
Hm, so you have undergrads, eh? :)
Well...not yet...
i've heard euros vacation quite extensively compared to us here in the states.
would love to find out myself, but that would require a vacation.
<sarcasm> Who needs to find a job after they graduate? Won't their parents support them when they are done college? </sarcasm>
Another bonus for staying in education, just not the crappy fixed-wage sector, is that I still get a good bit of the good vacation time. Who wants a sales pitch or training during teacher vacations like the winter break, Spring Break, etc.? Summers will still be a little busier, but hell, I was already working for $9 an hour in an honestly shitty (but really fun) job at the local brewery.
If you do get undergrads, I hear the right antibiotic can take care of them.
I'd just like to put in a quick plug here for the soulless corporate life.
Big companies these days are all about retention, esp. ones that are keen to retain their experienced staff in the face of outsourcing. I work from home one day a week, and my boss 2x/wk, so he could care less where I work. Since we're a global firm I'm going to work from Zurich this summer.
Sure, it's not the same as one month vacation, but really it will be better don't you think? I'll get to see how people really live, an experience I'm unlikely to get if I were going to museums and staying in a hotel.
DCR:
"Sure, it's not the same as one month vacation, but really it will be better don't you think? I'll get to see how people really live, an experience I'm unlikely to get if I were going to museums and staying in a hotel."
Differently good, I'd say. Do I interpret that you'll be working with people in the Zurich office? If so, that's fabulous for the reason you state. One sure way I can feel like I'm really visiting a place is to do something "workaday" while I'm there: at the least formal end, that means going to a local grocery supplier and cooking a meal in the kitchen of a local friend. At the most formal end, it means working with a local, paying client. (In between: volunteering somewhere, or doing some pro-bono consulting).
But regarding your comparison to a vacation: if you took a whole month in Zurich on "vacation," I can't imagine you'd have to stay the whole time in a hotel, nor spend all your days in the museums, n'est-ce pas?
BTW, a good book on this very question of visiting places (particularly Europe) in a way that really lets you "be" there with the other folks who were there when you arrived is Rick Steves' "Europe Through the Back Door". I have a copy right now that I'm trying to ignore, because I really want to get back to Indonesia first before returning to the Continent.
thanks, I'm a big fan of Rick though sometimes he's a bit pricey (I usually bring a tent when in europe). It will be different this time with a wife, new baby, and two dogs in tow.
Yah, I'll be working at the bank in Zurich. Housing is crazy expensive, but at least we've rented our house in Durham to partially offset the cost.
I was already working for $9 an hour in an honestly shitty (but really fun) job at the local brewery.
There are no shitty jobs at the brewery.
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