While many University of Michigan students pack up and leave campus after the end of the winter semester, some remain in Ann Arbor to enroll in spring and summer term courses and work around the city. While most of the popular campus areas such as the Shapiro Undergraduate Library and the Diag are nearly vacant, summer in Ann Arbor gives students the opportunity to immerse themselves in different activities that are exclusive to the spring and summer. The University promotes a number of events during this period, such as the Westside Art Hop, Top of the Park and the annual Ann Arbor Art Fair to give back to local businesses and provide students with engaging activities to partake in.
In an email to The Michigan Daily, LSA rising junior Maddie Shakoori explained she decided to stay in Ann Arbor this summer in order to work while still having access to University resources.
“I wanted to be able to have at least one Ann Arbor summer during my time as a student here,” Shakoori said. “I thought access to more university opportunities and pre-professional connections would be helpful at this time in my life. I am working full-time in retail at Brandy Melville, which pays fairly well while being a very flexible place of work. I also have a virtual project-based position as an AI math tutor. I am employed by a company called Outlier AI which assigns its employees different projects and then we complete them in a timely manner asynchronously. I enjoy this because I get to do more computational technical work compared to working in retail.”
Shakoori also elaborated on the newfound sense of community that she has experienced this summer as a result of there being fewer students on campus.
“Because there are significantly fewer people here I feel like everyone that is here feels so much more inclusive and happy to be with or see one another,” Shakoori wrote. “The community feels stronger in my opinion because people aren’t splitting off into their predetermined groups in the same way they may have prior when all students are on campus.”
In an email to The Daily, LSA rising senior Erin Long detailed the academic resources and campus resources that motivated her to stay on campus this summer.
“I am a research assistant in the Allada Lab researching the mechanisms behind sleep-related neurodegeneration, specifically that of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease),” Long wrote. “I also stayed because I’m taking the MCAT in August and I wanted to have access to the libraries! I love it with fewer people on campus. It’s a lot more peaceful and there’s always a spot in the Ugli, but I’m honestly so excited for the school year to start, especially since it’ll be my last one.”
In an email to The Daily, Engineering rising junior Jeanie Qi said she is spending her summer in Ann Arbor doing work with the University in addition to another job.
“I work full time at Yazaki, where I am a tech intern,” Qi wrote. “It’s a big company, so this is a great experience for me to gain insight into the corporate world. I also do research part-time at Umich, which I started during the school year, so I am just continuing it. I also am rewriting a relatively new physics course at UMich with the professor, also working part-time for this, and will probably continue into the school year as an instructional aide.”
Qi also explained how her experience living in Ann Arbor with more free time and fewer students has been different than in the academic year. She has been able to spend more time with people and immerse herself in new activities and experiences on campus, such as intramural sports.
“I keep myself busy and have more time to focus on myself over the summer,” Qi wrote. “A bunch of my friends are still in town, and I’ve made a lot of new friends, so it’s honestly a good balance of people doing their own thing and then meeting to hang out after work or on the weekends. I joined IM volleyball which is fun and I met some new people through that. There’s also a lot of fun events and festivals in Ann Arbor over the summer.”
Similarly, LSA rising junior Chase Evans explained in an email to The Daily that staying in Ann Arbor to work over the summer led him to discover new activities that he had not had time to explore during the academic year.
“I am currently a server at Sava’s,” Evans wrote. “I started the job during the winter semester and figured working throughout the summer would allow me to save up some money in order to prioritize school over work once classes begin. With the lack of people and nightlife in Ann Arbor, I have gone out of my comfort zone to find ways to spend my free time. I have spent a lot more time outdoors, taking part in activities such as fishing and tubing down the Huron River.”
Summer Managing News Editor Ellen Drejza can be reached at edrejza@umich.edu.
The post ‘The community feels stronger’: Why do UMich students stay on-campus during the summer? appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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