Last year, I wrote a post on things to do during the summer, and I will write one again this year.

Trips

Photo by j.reed

Road trip!  All college kids love road trips.  Sometimes it really doesn’t matter where you go, its the journey that counts.  Drive to go see the Grand Canyon and back.  Or if your looking for a place to actually stay for a while, I suggest either camping or going to a theme park.  The best theme park ever is Cedar Point.  It has some of the world’s fastest and tallest roller coasters.  The Top Thrill Dragster will shoot you straight up 420 feet at 120 miles per hours.  Or my favorite roller coaster is the Millennium Force, which has a 300 feet drop with a top speed of 90 miles per hour and a ride time of about 2 minutes and 20 seconds (which is a long time on a coaster).

Work on a Project

Design a project that you can work on all summer.  Take a project you did for one of your courses and expand on it.  Did you write software in your programming class?  Finish it.  Maybe it’s worth selling.  Or did you write a short story for your writing course?  Fine tune the story and try to get it published, or maybe turn the short story into a novel.

Read

It never hurts to read!  This is one of my goals over the summer.  I plan to read everything from fiction to text books and academic journals.

When you read, don’t just read.  Try to see if you can improve your reading speed, to do that just focus on reading faster and faster.  While there are courses on how to read faster, I believe it is something you can teach yourself.

Typing Course

You may think I am crazy for saying this but download a typing program and see if you can improve your typing skills.  I know you already know how to type fast, but if you are like me, you probably get sloppy at typing as time goes on.  It wouldn’t hurt to start over.  You can always benefit by being able to type faster.

My Summer Goals

During my summer, I plan to be productive.  More productive than when I was in school.  I’m not taking any summer courses and I am only working about 20 hours.  So I have a lot of time on my hands, and I have no intention of wasting it.

Blog Posts – Over the summer I will continue to have weekly posts and I would like to pre-write posts for the fall semester that I can publish during finals period.  That way the blog can continue while I’m trying to study for finals.

Reading - As I mentioned above I plan to read a lot.  I have a about 10 programming books I would like to skim through.  I’m going to be doing some Artificial Intelligence research, so I will be reading many academic articles also.  But of course I’m going to sit down and enjoy some great fiction literature.

I will reread the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin, who is by far the best fantasy author of our time.  Yes, it is a fantasy series, but I believe everyone will like the series; however, I will warn you that it is graphic with sex, gore, swearing, and never a happy ending. If your interested you can start with the first book in the series A Game of Thrones.

iPhone app - I am working on an iPhone application.  I won’t go into details.

Research - I will be working on some research in artificial intelligence, but most of that research will be reading and acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills.  Hopefully by the end of the summer I can begin working on some of my own ideas.

Well that’s what I’m going to be doing this summer.  I am also planning a trip with some friends, but I won’t do that until August.

What are you doing this summer?  Anything exciting? Is anyone traveling abroad?