Reading on the beach all day, working the night shift at a convenience store, studying abroad in England, and interning at Beaufort Books: respectively, these are the ways I’ve spent my last four summers. I’ve always found summers to be fun and exciting, but ultimately, regardless of the meaningful adventures I’ve had within them, these months have always been primarily a buffer between school years. Next summer, though, I’ll have graduated from college—I won’t have any school years left. Quite frankly, it’s a little bit terrifying to have no idea where I’ll be living or what I’ll be doing in just one year’s time. What I do know, though, is that at least I’ll be stepping into the unknown armed with all the lessons and skills I’ve accrued from summers past. In the summer going into my freshman year of college, I learned how to relax and go easy on myself when adapting to big life changes. Going into my sophomore year, I learned how to work at any task as hard as possible and with a smile on my face (and also may have unintentionally memorized the cost of my inevitable daily 16 oz. French vanilla cappuccino). Going into my junior year, I learned how to move past my fears to immerse myself in new environments.
2014: Reading on the beach: the ideal summer scenario
And from the summer going into my senior year? There’s so much I’ve learned while interning at Beaufort I’m not even sure where to begin! I’ve gotten firsthand experience with a wide range of fields in publishing like PR updates, copyediting, manuscript submissions, and even the wild world of BookExpo. A few things I know now that I didn’t at the beginning of the summer include how to: take artsy Instagram pictures of books; recognize the plot, author, and cover design of a shocking amount of books in our catalog (painstakingly reorganizing the office shelves and constantly needing to look up titles on our website was very helpful in that regard); read emails at light speed; and professionally answer a phone without internally freaking out (… for the most part). Perhaps most importantly, I also now appreciate the importance of investing in high quality office supplies—I love to jot down every detail of every project I’m given, but this was made significantly more complicated when my spiral ring notebook fell apart completely my first week on the job. (Though incredibly flimsy, it was a memento from my sorority that I didn’t have the heart to replace. Bad move.)
2015: Getting ready for a night of working at Wawa
Though I’m still figuring out what in the world I want to do after all college, I have a feeling that my takeaways from Beaufort will help me no matter where I end up. This time next summer I might not be shipping packages full of books, but thanks to the day where I thought I’d be fine without putting in extra packing material and ultimately had to rip open, stuff, and re-tape sixteen boxes, I’ll always remember it’s better to be safe than sorry. I might not be assigning keywords to titles on Amazon, but I’ll always benefit from the attention to detail that that task required me to develop. And I might not be reading submissions, but I’m sure that thinking back on some of the more entertaining pieces I reviewed this summer will never fail to make me smile.
2016: A literary-themed pub in England that matches my Beaufort pen name
So that’s why I want to say thanks for everything, Beaufort! Even though this coming summer will be the first that I won’t be able to handily describe as “the summer going into [insert year of schooling here]”, I know that with everything I’ve learned in the summers leading up to it—especially this one—I’ll be ready for whatever it has to offer. (After all, I’m not sure anything could be more difficult than the first time I had to decipher a royalty report spreadsheet.)
Happy reading,
Sherlock Beaulmes
2017: The door that has warmly welcomed me every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday this summer