Tips for Keeping Your Mind Sharp Over Summer Vacation

Another school year is behind us and summer vacation is here. Students get to enjoy a much needed break from the school year and busy their minds with vacations, barbecues, and summer activities. However, this doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination mean that it is time to stop learning. While it can be quite tempting to simply shut off our brains during the summer season, finding fun ways to continue learning can make it easier to come back to school and get into the swing of things, once the vacation is over. Here are some tips for keeping your mind sharp over summer vacation…

Read books that challenge you

Just like exercise can train specific muscle groups and keep the body strong, reading will fine tune the mind and keep it engaged. While any reading should be welcomed, especially if you find it pleasurable, it is definitely useful to stay ambitious and read books that you know are challenging your mind to think in different ways. Reading books from different perspectives can broaden our own viewpoint, and that has been shown to increase empathy.

Find an engaging summer program

For students, summer is a great opportunity to experiment with the independence that people have when they reach adulthood. However, it can still be beneficial to have some sort of routine that keeps life in balance during the summer vacation. Look around in your community for summer programs that you find engaging and that are actively improving you. This could be anything from a recreational sports program to a cinema club, so long as you are getting something positive and fulfilling from the experience.

Have a summer project

When summer vacation is over, it is always great to have something tangible that you can look back on and feel a sense of accomplishment about. Whatever your interests are, try to find a long-term project that will last throughout the summer that can keep you busy when you have time. Whether this is a complicated science experiment or just reading through a book series you’ve been curious about, wrapping something up over the summer that you wanted to do keeps the brain active.

Volunteer your time

There is no shortage of community involvement programs that help create a better society for us all to live in. Volunteering your time allows you to do your part to help with those problems, but also benefits you, as well! Students who spend time volunteering get to learn more about how our communities work and what problems are facing them. On a side note, colleges also tend to look favorably on students who have a track record of community involvement.