After listening to a conference call for one of my organizations back at school (SNAP), it's become painfully clear that reality doesn't suspend itself because I have an internship in DC. In fact, a sober evaluation of the overall landscape of my responsibilities reveals my desireneed to live in two distinct realities: Summer and real life.

Office work during the day, happy hours at night, museums and clubs on the weekend. Summers in DC are pretty much awesome. But with that awesomeness comes a price. I would argue that to fully enjoy that awesomeness, one must completely neglect all of one's real-world responsibilities. These may include study abroad applications, various extracurricular activities, studying for the LSAT, GRE or GMAT, applying for more students loans etc.

Regardless, my point is that these things should ideally be suspended during these beautiful Summer months. Is it too much to ask to be able to enjoy a little freedom from reality and pretend for a while that I'm not just padding my resume by working at [insert public official's office or think tank here], but living? Apparently so. There are, however, various coping techniques. Here's my list.

1) Google Calendars: Putting responsibilities on a shiny new g-cal gives me the sensation of doing something to fulfill those responsibilities without actually having to do anything. Also, it's really fun to show off how busy you are with the hard proof of an extremely colorful, google-generated life planner.

2) Parents; For me, telling my parents about everything that I have going on serves a triple purpose. For one, it makes my parents think I'm doing something with my life. Secondly, talking about your responsibilities serves a similar role to the g-cals (I swear that's not why I'm writing this post). Finally, parents love to nag and oftentimes that's what I need to actually do something.

3) Alluc.org: No matter what problems exist in life, this website can make you think, for hours on end, that they don't exist. Use with care.

Today's Sartorialist. She's baller. I want to be her. She's great. OK, I'm done drooling. Also, another metric (apart from math and science) where americans perform poorly... IMHO.