5 ways you can ace your college summer
This summer, don’t forget to mingle your merriment with exploration of your career opportunities!
As it often happens, the summer break during college is quite an awkward experience. Although there is a desire to enjoy and relax after a stressful year of college, there is also an anxiety of losing crucial time that can be used to propel your career forwards. To add to it, you see that nerd from school land internships at top notch firms while all that awaits you is the free trial of Netflix that expires in a month. What are you to do to match up with your friends who are busy adding pages upon pages to their CV?
There’s no need to fret! We’re here to guide you with all the options available for you so that can enjoy your well earned summer while also working simultaneously on technical topics. There is plenty of time to help improve your skills and knowledge in your major or field of desire while also enjoying yourself.
We’d like you to join our Facebook group SkillDen where you will be introduced to all the interesting tech and entrepreneurial news, internship opportunities and a like-minded community.
This was requested heavily by our group members, so here we’ve put together a list of actionable resources for you to work through, this summer. Check it out:
1. Go on, Hustle An Internship!
- Try hunting around for a summer internships through your contacts. You’d be often surprised by how powerful getting a referral through your own network can be! Even if it is a shorter intern that doesn’t cover your entire summer, it’s worthwhile to do if it helps you learn.
- Though professors are usually hard to get in touch for the summer, you can try approaching grad students or postdocs and offer to work with them over the summer on an academic research project. Junior academics always have a lot of ideas that they need help with, and they would be willing to invest more time in you.
- Ask local tech startups if they don’t mind you job shadowing. Most startups would be more than happy to help you explore what they’re doing and utilise you in whatever way they can in their system of work.
Shadowing gives you an idea of the technicalities of work as well as familiarizing you with the startup environment. It would be a great takeaway for you summer! - Try to volunteer at nearby nonprofits and NGOs regarding an issue you’re passionate about. Usually these places are understaffed and would be more than happy to accommodate you, especially if you could help them leverage technology for their operations. It would be an enriching experience, and would also shine through to your future employer.
- Send mails regarding opportunities and guidance. Takes a lot of patience and tries, but you can even get a letter of recommendation or a certificate of completion at the end of it if they find your work satisfactory.
Here’s an effective guide on writing mails that will actually get you responses.
2. Consume Content
- Explore your subject and try to get an idea of what is the latest field in it that’s blowing up and what skills do top graduates from your field possess. This is a good way to find out what your goals should be while also exploring what part of your major you’re most interested in.
- Listen to more podcasts and read newsletters!
- Read books that open up your mind regarding entrepreneurship, technology and the current marketplace. A lot of what is not taught in college is in these books that’ll be a great supplement to further your career goals.
Here’s a few of our picks to get you started:
Learn anything that you can effectively learn through the internet using MOOCs. Don’t take high load courses with lots of pre-requisites. Your ambition doesn’t exclude the need for a proper learning curve.
Here’s a site which helps you pick the best MOOCs :
3. Join Online Communities
- Join forums, subreddits, slack channels, discord servers, telegram groups, Facebook Groups and other online communities linked with your subject of choice. This will help you keep in touch with other people of similar interests. Post queries and explain questions of others that you can and you will see that you’re engagement is furthering your knowledge as well as enthusiasm for the field.
- You can best help yourself by visiting the above listed portals and searching for topics that are relevant to you. In addition, you should check out StackExchange, and various MOOCs whose online forums have active members who contribute quality content. Don’t be shy to engage! These people would be more than happy to welcome and answer newcomers.
4. Build
- Reach out to a peer to ask if they’d be interested in working on a group project with you. Group projects say a lot more than solo projects as they demonstrate a potential employee/intern’s ability to collaborate with others, which is pivotal in an industry setting where most things you do affect other people’s jobs.
- Work on a project that demonstrates proficiency in some non-tech skills, like writing, communication, leadership, etc. In today’s marketplace soft skills play a huge role and should be inculcated from the very beginning. We’d strongly urge you to start blogging regularly on a platform such as medium.com to build your personal portfolio.
- Learn the basics of web development / app development and ask local non-tech startups if they’d let you design their website. Try to get some nominal fee out of it, but even if you would have to do it for free it would be a worthwhile use of your time.
If taking up programming and web development is too tough a task for you, you should consider being proficient in the upcoming wave of building websites and applications without the need for knowing any programming languages! Check them out!
5. Events
- Explore any tech conventions going on in your vicinity. It’ll help you meet a lot of like minded people, opening you up to interesting conversations and new ideas.
- Go to tech talks in your area. You will find that co-working spaces have regular sessions on tech and business — so go talk to them! If you’re not able to find any in your locality, be on the lookout for webinars and keep a track of interesting people whose talks can help you explore your field of study more deeply.
You can find a list of conventions, meetups and events here :
Lastly, we’d like to urge you to take time off irrespective of whether you are doing an internship or not to travel, relax and spend time with your family. This may be the last time you get to spend quality time with them. Utilize it well. Do not feel forced to be productive all year long, and there should definitely be no guilt around taking time off to take care of yourself.
Happy Learning!
