Fall and winter break are typically the times of the year that college students take a load off and become couch potatoes at home with their families. While I’m not knocking this approach because it’s super relaxing and sort of rewarding in the moment, there are so many other amazing things that you could be doing.
Fall and winter break should be the time that you use to build your resume, network with people in your dream career, and take on new challenges that allow you to grow has an individual.
Here are some ideas of some of things that you can use your breaks to their best potential:
Go on a Mission Trip
Mission trips are such an amazing and rewarding experience. You usually have to apply and pay for these trips early on, but no worries, they usually have a fundraising option or a payment option to allow students to participate in mission trips around the world.
These are really amazing if you are in the healthcare field because you get to work on patients in third-world countries and get to use your skills that you’ve learned in class.
Know a language and want to improve your speaking skills? You can end up being a translator during your trip. Either way no matter what major is, a mission trip is a great opportunity to challenge yourself and give back to a community.
Spend Some Quality Time with Friends and Family
Between classes and exams, free time to hang out with friends and family definitely becomes more limited during the school year, so be sure to spend some quality time with them during your breaks. You’ll be surprised how much you missed the human interaction with other normal human beings. I love baking, taking fun classes at the local library, and binge-watching Hulu, but by all means, do what makes you happy and keeps you stress-free for the few weeks of fall and winter break.
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Volunteer in Your Area
Volunteering is one of the most rewarding activities that you can do, and it looks amazing on your resume. It shows your future employers your personality and your dedication to helping others while not gaining a profit from it.
There are loads of ways that you volunteer in your area, including volunteering at a homeless shelter, a free medical clinic, an animal shelter, or at a nursing home. You can even volunteer with some organizations in your community to help with different events like at a 5k or a baseball game.
Organizations are always looking for willing volunteers to help with their events and it’s a great way to network in your community. The people that you meet while volunteering could easily write you a recommendation letter or be a reference on your resume.
The possibilities are endless!
Write Down Your Goals and Start Them NOW!
Most people wait until New Year’s to write down their goals and to get started on them after the holidays, but the problem with that for college students is that you won’t have much time during school to achieve those goals.
So, go ahead and get a head start on planning and executing your goals. It could be anything small or big, or even make mini goals that will lead you to your bigger goal.
When you’re thinking of goals, think of what the end result will be and plan out the steps you get there. You’ll also want to put a quantity or time limit on your goals so that you can track your progress along the journey.
Some ideas of goals that you might have:
- Study for 1 hour every day for your hardest class
- Start a Youtube channel and get to 100,000 subscribers in 1 year
- Build a blog that gets 10,000 pageviews each month
- Launch a business in less than 6 months
- Gain 2,000 followers on Instagram in 5 months
Start a Website to Showcase Your Skills
Okay, I’m a little biased when it comes to building your own website, but it’s a great way to showcase your skills, and it’s not as hard as everyone thinks.
For an example, if you’re majoring in multimedia graphic designing, you can showcase some of the work that you’ve done before, such as resume templates or logo designs. Another option is to display your resume on your website and include some pictures, testimonials, and stories that showcase your skills and experience.
Start a Blog
Blogging is a therapy outlet for me because I love writing and helping others through my work. Blogging gives me the opportunity to reach more people who are interested in what I have to say. You can easily blog for fun or for profit. I currently am still learning about how to make money blogging, but I would continue to do it just because I enjoy it.
When it comes to blogging, outline your goals and aspirations before you start setting it up, that way you can figure out if you want to do the self-hosted route or not.
Maybe you’re blogging because you want to meet like-minded people, or want to showcase a new way of doing something like doing a project. By creating a blog, you can easily do that and more!
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Start a Hobby You’ve Always Wanted to Try
With all of the free time you’ll have during fall and winter break, you’ll have plenty of time to learn a hobby. Maybe it’s a hobby that you’ve always wanted to do, but never had time or funds to do so. Now is the time to try something new!
Starting a new hobby during your break is the best way to challenge yourself and to improve the skills that you already have. Plus, you won’t be stressed out by exams and other responsibilities that have to get done during the normal school year.
Here are some ideas of some hobbies that you might want to try out:
- Aerial Aerobic
- Paintballing
- Painting
- Running
- Yoga
- Knitting
- Reading books
- Scuba Diving
- Building Model Trains or Scale Model Buildings (very relaxing!)
How do you spend your fall and winter Break? Let me know in the comments below!
POST AUTHOR: Makaela Premont
Hey! I’m Makaela, from Uniquely Mickie, a college and lifestyle blog dedicated to helping millennials. I’m currently a pharmacy student at the University of South Carolina College of Pharmacy. When I’m not studying drugs or drug mechanisms, I love reading, swimming, and hanging out with friends.
It surprised me to see that you mentioned volunteering here in this post. Not too many people really talk about it, at least on the different blogs I read so it was refreshing to see that you suggested it as a thing that college students can do with some free time over their school breaks.
It’s definitely a great way to give back to the community, pad up your resume a bit, and depending on where you volunteer there are some great opportunities for networking as well.
Thanks For The Helpful post! I’ll be sure to try out a few of these ideas over the next school holidays!
Glad you found it helpful, Stefan!
I’m so glad that you found this blog post helpful! I’m a huge fan of volunteering and finding new ways to spend your free time, instead of sitting at home bored out of your mind.
-xo, Makaela
http://www.uniquelymickie.com
Great post! I’m hoping to read loads of books/paint over my breaks — thanks also for providing the concrete example goals 🙂