The best thing about the summer for Lydia Nieves is the ease of parking on campus.

Nieves, senior health and human sciences major, is one of the few students who elects to stay on the NIU campus between spring and fall semesters to enroll in summer classes.

Nieves traded lazy summer days for waking up early and keeping up with homework.

“I wanted to get a statistics course out of the way so I wouldn’t have to take it in the fall,” she said.

Sophomore sociology major Paula Angeli Rosales said the biggest difference between school year and summer school courses is the workload.

“It’s a little bit harder since you only have a couple of weeks to finish a whole semester, so it’s about your time management, if anything,” she said. “You have more to read. You have more papers to write. You have more quizzes every week.”

Some students need to use time management when handling both summer employment and the intensity of summer courses.

Hannah Hornung, junior operations management and informations system major, said she tries to balance schoolwork with her job.

Ibis Gomez-Vega, assocate professor of English, said she enjoys teaching summer school classes because the students don’t waste their time.

Gomez-Vega said she likes to keep busy between official NIU academic school years.

“I like teaching.” Gomez-Vega said. “For me, the summer semester is just part of the school year. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I was not teaching.”

Editor’s Note: Managing Editor Kyla Gardner contributed to this article.