HawkTalk
Beyond NY Megan Irving

The Sisterhood of the Traveling HawkTalkers

Dear Reader,

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It's finally summer!

You know it has been practically a year since we last talked. To quote Willie Nelson, "ain't it funny how time slips away?" I know my year was full of internship milestones, caffeine fueled all-nighters and more essays than I can count. Now that the dust of a whirlwind spring semester has settled, I have the opportunity to stop for a moment and breathe.

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Have to love those minimum wage jobs.

While some of my fellow HawkTalkers will be spending their summers in far off lands, in competitive internships and in NYC, I have chosen to spend my summer back in my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Not that Chicago is anything to sneeze at, it is of course a world class city in its own right. But, it is the nature of both writers and young adults to feel confined in their home town. Think of me as the Tibby in our Sisterhood of the Traveling hawktalkers. For those of you that get that reference, you clearly have excellent taste in young adult literature.

While I will be waiting with baited breath for the post from my fellow hawktalkers, I hope you won't find my posts too boring. What I lack in jet setting adventure, I promise to make up for in humor and sass. Besides, dear reader, I have the sneaking suspicion that you and I will have similar summers. Full of blockbuster movies, minimum wage jobs, and soft summer nights. Perhaps it's just the writer in me, but there is something to be said for the adventure to be found in your hometown. Though I must admit, I have spent the majority of the past two weeks working on my own young adult novel in my local Starbucks. So, there's that.

But dear reader, don't mistake my classic summer for unproductive. I have so many goals for these next three months. I'm going to finally finish my aforementioned novel. I'm going to successfully teach myself how to play the ukulele (so far I've only semi-mastered the Lion Sleeps Tonight, Brown Eyed Girl and the Golden Girls Theme Song.) And, at my mother's request, I'm supposedly going to learn how to drive a car, and then take a test where the state of Illinois will verify that I can drive said car. 9th times a charm, right?

Stay with me this summer. A lot can happen in three months. I'll keep you posted, you keep on reading.

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Three months moves pretty fast...