Using Summer for More Than Vacation

Using Summer for More Than Vacation For high school students, summer vacation is a three-month recess to forget the pressures of teachers, homework, grades and tests. For many, it is a time to seek out the sun and engage in some fun. But for others, it also is a period of learning, self-discovery and growth: It’s that first job, a memorable trip, a long-term project or goal attained after hard work. Sharing their memories, high school students wrote essays or talked with DEBORAH BELGUM about their summers.

*

MIKE SLIFF, 15, of Hermosa Beach, a sophomore at Redondo Union High School, has spent the summer trying to get the city to build a skateboard park.

Two friends and I went with one of the Park and Recreation commissioners from Hermosa Beach to visit another skateboard park in Santa Fe Springs. We’ve been passing out flyers to everyone to go to the Park and Recreation meetings and the City Council meetings or wherever anyone would talk about the park.

This has really brought everyone in the skateboard community together because we know we are working together to get something we all want.

It takes a lot of talking to people and getting them interested. You have to be a good people person. If you don’t have good social skills, no one is going to listen to you. No matter what other people say, you have to push on. At the beginning, people said, “Are you crazy? You are never going to get a skateboard park.” A lot of my parents’ friends would say, you shouldn’t waste your time on this. But I have extremely high hopes.