Summer is detrimental to a college kid’s progression in life. In little over a week, my brain has oozed out my ears and my muscles have degraded into jiggly pockets of fat. We’re in class for nine months, studying our asses off and trying so hard to become real people that we forget what it’s like to truly relax and do nothing.

When it comes to summer, successful days are those defined by a good “I Love the ’90s” marathon on VH1 or getting one shade closer to bronze god. Productive days for me are days I manage to get off the couch to wash the car or shower. These summers are the last time until retirement that I’m allowed to just sit there and drool without much punishment.

Yet, as much as I love them, summers are a horrible idea. They break routine so much so that sometimes I forget how to write when I come back to school. In fact, the reason why I don’t know how to write in cursive anymore is because of that one summer after third grade. Nobody was there to force me to connect all my letters in a curvy fashion, so I lost that apparently important skill. Thank goodness for Facebook.com and its incredible stalking ability, or else I think I’d lose my ability to read and type, too. Year-round school, as hellish as it sounds, is a brilliant idea. Summer vacations are just silly. In the real world there’s no such thing as summer break. The only way you can tell it’s summer is that the daycare center is suddenly filled with irritating 10-year-old Satan children who can’t stop asking you why your face is always angry. All summer teaches us is that every once in a while, you can just take a time out from the stresses of life to get fat and watch reruns. What a tease summer break is.

Summer’s also a bitch because it rips you away from your kick-ass college friends and forces you to talk to those lame kids from high school that never really did anything with their lives. Hanging out with them is weird. It’s always a competition to see who had the best time in college — or as I just witnessed — who can chug the most bottles of water. Maybe you have the best high school friends in the world, but more than a few of mine, I realize now, are big douche bags.

Being stuck at home around the same people also frequently leads to some desperate hooking up, and the ass you get is even worse than the coyote you hooked up with on DP. Suddenly, that high school senior starts to look so much hotter and more mature than you remember. Additionally, hooking up at home blows because the choices are either your parents’ house or the backseat of the car, which aren’t very romantic or epic whatsoever.

Also, even though parents get on your back for not having one, summer jobs aren’t really a substitute for any sort of real responsibility either. You don’t really acquire any life skills from bagging groceries and scanning food products all day, and your future bosses aren’t going to be impressed with your knowledge of McDonald’s hamburger sizes.

I used to think people who went to summer school were crazy, but I’m beginning to see their logic. Being in school forces you to get up at least once a day, shower and be social, while still keeping your parents away. And, you know, you learn stuff, too, I guess.

Two weeks ago I was peeing my pants I was so excited to get home, but now I just can’t remember why. Congratulations on making the smart choice, summer school kids. While you’re sexing it up with strangers in I.V., I’ll be up here at home, making out with high school kids and hitting the hay by midnight.

Daily Nexus Assistant Opinion Editor Nicki Arnold hopes that high school kid she hooked up with last night isn’t a member of the UCSB class of 2010.