My junior year was ending and I knew I didn’t want to go home. How could I go home? Everything at home was K. My friends were really his friends. My hobbies were his hobbies. Thus began my search for a summer job, anywhere but home.

I had a couple prospects for a paid summer internship, however, nothing panned out before school ended, so I packed up and went home for the summer. I didn’t have any leads for a summer job at home either, so I had no idea what I was going to do.

I was home for about a week when I got a call from a company located in the Metro Detroit area. The company was Entertainment Publications, the publisher of the Entertainment coupon books (you know, “buy one get one free” at restaurants, etc.) They were looking for a summer intern, doing recruiting in their Human Resources Department. I talked with the Director of Staffing on the phone for about 15 minutes and then she hired me on the spot! Sight unseen and all. I accepted the position in a heartbeat, but I had no idea where I would be living. I had family in the Detroit area, and a few friends, one being C and another being E, the former Marketing Manager that I worked with at ARAMARK during my internship during the year up at school.

After discussing everything with my parents, they called my aunt and uncle and asked if I could stay with them for the summer. They were empty-nesters, and thankfully said I could stay with them for free. I was beyond ecstatic. I had a great relationship with my aunt and uncle, and they only lived a few miles from where I would be working. Everything was falling into place.

I moved to my aunt and uncle’s house over Mother’s Day weekend. My parents helped me move out there, and my cousin drove over that weekend to show me where I would be working, as she had worked for Entertainment during the summers of her college years. Entertainment had a great program for hiring students in the summer.

The bonus of all this was that E and C were very close to me, so I knew I would have friends close by for the whole summer. While C and I are now best friends, and by that point had lived together for two school years, we weren’t used to “hanging out” outside of the school atmosphere. So while we hung out a bit that summer, we did more emailing and talking, and I hung out more with E. If C and I lived that close nowadays, we’d be seeing each other at least once a week!

I loved my job at Entertainment. My boss was amazing. She had a lot of energy, and while she was a working manager, she took the time to sit and help you learn or get caught up on what you were working on. She and I worked on many projects together and she really taught me what a great manager was all about.

E and I had a blast that summer. I saw her multiple times a week, whether she was coming over to my aunt and uncle’s house, we were meeting for dinner, or I was going to her apartment. We spent a lot of weekends at the bar. It’s a wonder I saved any money that summer!!

One weekend, we went saw Dave Matthews in concert at Comerica Park. That was an amazing concert. After it was over, I gathered the courage to call my online friend from another state. I hadn’t talked to him since school got out, so it was nice to have a conversation with him.

Another memorable moment from that summer was when I invited K, who I was still friends with, out to Detroit to go to a Tigers game with E and I and a couple other people. The plan was that he would drive out on a Friday evening and we’d hit a couple bars and then go to the game on Saturday and he’d drive back home. I thought that I’d be okay seeing him since it had been a few months since we had broken up. But seeing him brought back a lot of feelings, both good and bad. So that first night, I just ended up drinking a lot and getting drunk…it was easier to be drunk than to deal with my feelings at the time.

The next day, we were sitting around, waiting to head off to the game and E’s dog was chewing on K’s hat. I told K to get his hat away from the dog, especially since I was the one who gave him that hat. And then K did what he was great at…he looked at me and gave the hat to the dog to chew on. At that moment, everything was so clear. I knew without a doubt that we weren’t meant to be together, and any thoughts I had about us ever getting back together were gone. I didn’t want to get back together with him. Things were really over.

The summer ended with me meeting another guy that I was kind of interested in. He was the brother of a friend of E’s, and actually attended CMU as well. We had one date before heading back to school, and promised to catch up once school started.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about dating someone that went to the same school as me. I wasn’t accustomed to having someone that close and accessible. Little did I know, I would meet yet another guy, who was also very accessible, in the near future.