Hi I’m Anna, I’m Kamal, and I’m Lindsey and we all graduated from Woodson’s class of 2011.  And we’re going to talk a little bit about what to do over the summer in high school. 

So I am a soccer player so I spend a lot of my summer through high school going to tournaments and going to camp for soccer and conditioning and participating in small group training and practicing with my club team.  So if you’re an athlete and you want to play a sport in college I would say that’s not a bad thing to devote a lot of your summer to practicing with your sport and with your team and that can also, when you apply to college, even if you decide not to play a sport in college, you can show that you were dedicated to what you were doing and used your time to improve your skills and what you were interested in.  So if you’re into sports and that’s what you spend a lot of your time doing then I would say that’s not a bad option to spend your summer training.

Also over the summer, I took classes over the summer in Geometry and Physics. And it’s not a bad idea early on to take some of those classes especially if it will allow you to take classes that might help you get ahead in college or make college a little easier for you.  It’s definitely not too time consuming, it’s definitely manageable; you can still have a fun summer because all you’re doing is spending time on one class.  So, it’s really something you can do and feel good about it at the end. 

Also I got a job during my summers and it’s really good because it gives you something to do, you can learn new things, meet new people, and it looks good also on college applications because they’ll know that you’re not sitting around all summer, going to the pool, you’re actually working and making an effort to do something productive.

During my summers I did volunteer work with children’s summer camp and it helped me and I feel like it rounded out my application and also during the school year I’m a part of national honors society and so it allowed me to get ahead in NHS community service hours during the summer and I was able to apply them during the school year so during the school year I can have more time to work on college applications during my senior year and also just volunteering during the summer just gives you resources for during the school year if you want to continue volunteering for government classes, you need volunteering hours and that also gave me just another resource to go to so during the summer I was able to find out things I was able to use during my senior year and also during my junior year.

I would say some kids might freak out and feel like you need to start getting internships and experience, job experience, with maybe the career or major you want to study in college.  While I do think you can get some good experience and you can demonstrate your interests in a particular area to an admissions committee when you are applying to college.  I definitely wouldn’t say that needs to be your number one focus that you need to direct your summer activities towards one specific area of study or major or anything like that because chances are your interests will change and if they don’t change in high school they might change in college. 

So I would say do what you’re interested in and if you have an area of interest that you really want to pursue then I would say take advantage of that and get some experience, or intern or something.  But don’t worry too much about directing your activities towards one specific area.

Thank you.