12 Ways to Have a Meaningful Summer

1.) Get Involved in your Community

2.) Listen to Podcasts to investigate your academic interests

3.) Get a Job: Coffee shop, ice cream shops, boutiques, restaurants

4.) Participate in a Pre-College Summer Program to study something you are interested in or can’t study at school

 (*These are just examples, there are many more areas of interest and additional programs in each category.)

5.) Take an Online Course or at the Community College

6.) Travel Abroad

7.) Do Research or an Internship

  • Ladder Internships- work with starts-ups around the world.
  • Cosmos @ UC Davis – California State Summer School for Mathematics.
  • The Forage – Explore careers and prepare for the job with hundreds of free job simulations designed by the world’s top employers.
  • Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) at San Francisco State University.
  • Lumiere Education: Differing levels of research programs for all subjects for ambitious students.
  • Research in Science and Engineering Program (RISE): 6 week program that explores science and engineering research at Boston University.
  • SHTEM Summer Research at Stanford: Research exposure in, humanities, communication, engineering, the arts, linguistics, psychology, biology, neuroscience, computer science, technology, philosophy, and design, and other areas.   
  • Polygence: Work with an excerpt mentor to explore your interests. Check out interesting projects on-line.

8.) Get Involved in Social Justice and Activism

9.) DYI your own business or research project

  • Create a sports camp for kids in your neighborhood.
  • Create something you can sell on Etsy.
  • Upsell/ recycle clothes.
  • Interview people in a field you are interested in.

10 .) Watch a Ted Talk to learn more about a topic

11.) Attend an Event (search EventBrite for more)

12.) Have Some “PDF” Time

  • Play time
  • Down time
  • Family and friend time