Summer Postcard: Waiting for September

PALMA DE MALLORCA, Spain—Because I spend so much time at home, I often forget how nearsighted I am and thus forget to put on glasses. That’s usually where I am — at home or the gym. Since I don’t have a job, I can never find money or reasons to do much else. Sometimes I’ll go to the beach — about a seven-minute walk from my house. But it’s not a very nice beach, and I hate being in the sun for that long.

That’s the rhythm of my life this time of year, centered around my group exercise classes. I’ve never been much of a jock, but the gym has air conditioning and memberships in Spain are pretty cheap.

It seems counterintuitive that I’d spend summer in Palma closed inside the gym. I love it here, I do. But for me it’s just home, in the same way that Pennsylvania or Florida or New York City is just home to you.

A lot of people are shocked when I tell them where I’m from, as if it’s too good to be true. An island in the Mediterranean. When you say it like that, it sounds like a place that no one is from, but that everyone goes to on vacation. That’s certainly the impression you can get in the summer.

I was planning to write this postcard about something else, since this topic could make me sound spoiled. I’d do another piece about the World Cup, or something about Spanish politics. As if I’d spent my summer musing about globalization or women’s issues.

This, instead, is the truth. I submitted so many online applications for jobs: everything from writing tourism pamphlets to waitressing. I walked around all the offices at the airport with ten copies of my resume in my bag.

The phone never rang. Here, they don’t hire teenagers for summer jobs. The youth unemployment rate is currently at 35 percent.

So, here I am, biding my time until the end of August..

Carmen S. Enrique ’21, a Crimson Associate Blog Editor, lives in Eliot House.