Since I have spent many summers working for minimum wage, I typically dread coming back to school and facing the question, “What did you do this summer?”

My classmates seem to have spent their summers doing fascinating and impressive things. They have been busy developing cars that run on water, feeding the starving people of Zimbabwe and interning at the New Yorker.

I generally prefer sulking in my inadequacy to answering this question with, “I spent my summer behind a cash register chirping ‘Have a nice day!’ to the soccer moms, construction workers and lottery addicts who frequent the Wentzville, Mo. U-Gas.”

This summer was different, and though it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, it was the best I’ve ever had.

I feel that my summer can be best explained with four songs: “America” by Simon & Garfunkel, “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve, “Homesick” by the Vines and “Art is Hard” by Cursive.

I chose “America” because it is a quintessential road trip song. In May, my best friend Keaton and I decided to drive in a loop that started in New Orleans and reached Atlanta, Baltimore and St. Louis.

Having never been on a road trip before, we didn’t know what to expect, but we drove off undaunted to look for America.

I don’t know if we ever found it, but we did find a lot of bookstores. By the end of the trip, we had acquired nearly 200 books between us.

I returned to New Orleans in June to find some angry-looking mold had overrun a wall in my apartment. Two roommates moved out, convinced that the growth was toxic black mold.

Like Verve vocalist Rich Ashcroft, I was there in my mold and, no matter how much bleach I used, I could not change my mold.

Eventually, a contractor redid the drywall, I found new roommates and we lived happily ever after until I went to Spain in July, where things were more difficult than I’d imagined.

My Spanish was rusty, which made communication frustrating. I missed my friends, and I really missed American food. My body had a hard time adjusting to the new climate and food, and I was sick for almost my entire stay.

So, not only was I homesick, as the aptly titled Vines song suggests, I was also physically ill.

That being said, Spain was absolutely beautiful, and I learned more Spanish abroad than I did in any American language class.

This brings me to “Art is Hard” by Cursive. I chose this song because last semester I agreed to illustrate a children’s book for a friend. Neither of us realized how daunting this task would be. So, the time that I did not spend doing the aforementioned things was spent drawing cartoon ducks.

Holly Combs can be reached at [email protected]