Going to school during the summer never sounds like a ton of fun. At Barnard's Summer in NYC program, even though you are taking college-level classes, it never really feels like work. The faculty is highly competent and very knowledgeable. Most have taught college-level courses before; some are even Barnard or Columbia professors. Each class takes multiple field trips throughout the city. I was in a course entitled “Creating Fantastic Fabulist Fiction,” taught by Melanie Fallon. During that one-week period, we not only learned what “fabulist fiction” is (think: ghost stories and fairy tales), but we wrote our own fabulist fiction stories. To get inspiration, Melanie took us to the Guggenheim Museum and to Gramercy Park, the only private park in Manhattan. Trips for other classes included music performances and plays. One of my friends was in the theater class that year and after a play, she got to meet Sandra Oh (now of “Grey’s Anatomy” fame) during a Q