9 Ways to Spend Your Summer Vacation Without an Internship
Summer internships aren’t the only way to spend the time between one semester of college and the next. Despite societal standards that make you feel like you HAVE to have a summer internship at a major company to be successful in corporate America, there are plenty of valuable ways to spend your summer vacation.
Whether you’re disappointed things didn’t work out differently or if none of your options felt like a good fit, you can always find another way to build your resume.
How should you spend your summer vacation instead of doing an internship?
Here are a few ways you can spend your summer to help you develop as a person and build some resume experience:
Read self-help / informative books
Formal education is just the tip of the iceberg for all there is to learn in life. There is so much more information that we can get through reading books written by experts in their field.
Everyone should try and acquire knowledge in personal finance, interpersonal communication, and self-understanding as these are areas that are often challenging to learn in a classroom setting. Having some knowledge of these skills will put you in a good position once you enter the real world because they’re only briefly taught in formal education.
A great place to start for personal finance is:
I Will Teach You to Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. by Ramit Sethi.
This book is a good place to start to get basic knowledge of personal finance and help you determine your personal financial goals. Once you’re able to define what a rich life is for you, you can work towards your goals and align your decisions with your values.
As a bonus, the author of this book has a Netflix show by the same title. If you have a Netflix subscription, you can watch the show as well and get a deeper understanding of some of the principles he teaches. I wrote a blog post about the key takeaways I had from this book.
A book for interpersonal communication:
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
This book not only teaches mindsets and skills that you should develop to become an “effective” person, but it also teaches ways to improve relationships both casual and professional.
Communicating with coworkers, friends, and family is a huge part of what can make you happy and successful. Growing interpersonal communication skills is something that will set you apart from others and allow you to build long-lasting healthy relationships.
A book for self-understanding:
101 essays that will change the way you think by Brianna Wiest
While this book won’t explicitly help you work through all your past and present trauma, it will give you food for thought. You’ll begin to look at your life and personal emotions through a different lens. A change in perspective is a great way to begin understanding yourself and your direction better.
These are just a few examples of where to start for personal growth, but there’s also a lot to learn from fictional books. Picking up any book is a great way to spend summer vacation and expand your understanding of yourself or the world. Maybe even join a book club!
NOTE: if you aren’t particularly a book person, but would still like to expand your knowledge, try listening to podcasts. There’s so much information out there, in many media formats.
Get a part-time job
If part of the internship appeal was the money that comes with it, then getting a part-time job may be a good option. ANY experience is a good experience and the things that you may learn in a service job can be the most valuable lessons you bring into a corporate job later in life.
Your part-time job doesn’t have to correspond to the field you want to enter in the future, but it’s a good idea to try and look industry adjacent. That means if you hope to work in sports, maybe you get a part-time job in concessions at a baseball field.
Showing that you are willing to work at any level in the industry and that you have experience and knowledge firsthand will impress interviewers in the future. Remember, there’s always a transferable skill in any job you just have to pinpoint it and use it to your advantage.
Volunteer
Few things in the world can fill the heart with joy the same way volunteering can. You get to share your time doing something that will hopefully uplift the community which can make you feel like you can accomplish anything.
Volunteering doesn’t have to be something where you’re doing something no one else wants to like trash pick up. You can go to a food bank, work with Habitat for Humanity, or even read to kids at a local library.
Doing volunteer work can help you understand your passions better. What makes you happy and how would you want to make the world better if money wasn’t a factor? These are the things that may help you develop a clearer vision of what a happy future looks like for you and how you’d like to spend your time when you’re able to do more than work 9-5.
Shadow professionals in a field of interest
This works particularly well for students hoping to pursue a medical profession, but it can apply to any major/industry. Reach out to people in your community: neighbors, family friends, coworkers of your parents, etc. If they work in a field that you may be interested in, they may be able to get you an opportunity to come in and shadow their work day.
Even if it’s not a career you could see yourself in at the moment, you may find some career paths that you never knew existed. Not to mention, the experience you get from shadowing is the closest you’ll likely get to the internship experience in that role because you’ll get to ask questions and see a work day firsthand.
It’s also cool that you can spend the summer experimenting with multiple industries and go back to school with more decision-making data to help you figure out where you want to focus your energy for your internship search in the upcoming year.
Focus on a hobby / develop a new skill
Since you’ve probably been going to school most days since the age of 4, you probably haven’t had much time to develop new skills (especially if you’ve played a specific sport during all of those years). I’m sure there are things you’re interested in trying, but there just don’t seem like enough hours in the day.
Now is the time to get rid of the excuses and start the new hobby you’ve been excited to try. The good thing about trying something new is that if you hate it that’s just as beneficial as if you love it because now you know it’s not a dream you’d like to continue focusing your energy on.
There are a bunch of skills you can develop, but it truly depends on your interests. A few that come to mind are:
- coding
- painting
- cooking
- public speaking
- graphic design
- photography
- gardening
- digital media (video & photo editing)
- writing
Again, the skill you develop doesn’t have to be directly related to a career path, it can be completely random. BUT, in a world of growing media presence in your day-to-day life, learning some digital skills may help set you apart or create a secondary stream of revenue down the road.
Take summer classes
Taking summer classes can make you feel more productive as you work towards the concrete goal of graduating college. Maybe taking a course or two in the summer can help you graduate a semester early, or maybe you’ll be able to take fewer courses during the school year and focus more on clubs and development outside of the classroom.
If there are classes that are known to be particularly challenging at your university, now may be a good time to take them at your local community college OR you could take the time to combine a previous tip and take classes focused on a specific skill. This way you’ll have more professional direction as you take on a new hobby.
Join a research lab
Depending on your university, research could be a huge area of focus. Most professors have labs on campus where they analyze a very niche topic in their area of study. Check out different labs on campus and see if professors within your area of interest are looking for undergraduate helping hands for the summer.
If you took a class that you were interested in or had a professor you enjoyed, you could also reach out to them directly and see if they’re looking to take on an undergraduate student.
This is a great way to get professional experience that you can speak to without having an internship, and who knows? you may decide that you like research and want to continue in academia and do that as a career.
Network / Coffee chats
Similar to shadowing, you can build your network and have chats with professionals about their careers. The beauty of software like Zoom and Microsoft Teams is that now you can communicate with people all over the world about their experiences.
If you don’t already have a LinkedIn account, now is a good time to make one and start connecting with people you know and people who have careers that interest you. Once you start to build your online network you can reach out to people and set up online or in-person chats.
This doesn’t have to happen through linkedin though. You can also cold-email people in your community: family, friends, neighbors, etc., and see if they’d be willing to talk you through their career experience and give advice on finding your correct path.
Take a break
Even though we’re conditioned to believe that we always have to be doing something and be productive to live a successful life, it’s important to also take breaks and allow yourself to have fun. If you never stop to smell the roses, what’s the point of nurturing them in the first place?
Remember: there’s just as much value (if not more) in experiencing the world through travel, spending time with friends and family, and simply relaxing as there is in working 9-5 in an office every day. While the experiences are different, they each grow a part of your personality and skill set that is important for success.
Not having a summer internship is not the end of the world. There’s just as much to do and learn from alternative experiences. Using these ideas, you’re sure to have a summer filled with resume-building experiences and relaxing fun!
