How To Stay Relevant And Increase Your Skill Set During Summer Without A Job

How To Stay Relevant And Increase Your Skill Set During Summer Without A Job pexels.com Take Online Courses Learn some new things that can help you brush up, improve, or gain a new skill set! These can be courses actually offered by university or tutorial video classes that you can take online. There are so many options, free options especially; it would be a shame to miss out on them. You can take classes offered for free by world renowned universities like Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Berkeley, MIT, and more! See what kinds of online courses they offer and when sometimes you can even get certifications for taking certain courses. While they might not show up on your transcript, you will still have gained some valuable knowledge that can help you in whatever you are trying to achieve. And having a certification from a school like Yale or any of the others listed above will look pretty impressive on your resume. You can also take classes via Lynda.com. You do need to set up an account with them, but the number and types of classes you can take are endless! Many schools, like Florida State University, actually provide accounts to this website for all of their students automatically. You can learn more about social media marketing, how to improve your Photoshop skills, or how to use your camera better. The videos are sorted by levels so you can start at a beginners level and rise to the top. There is always a class that could help you improve on what you already do and what you want to do as well. pexels.com School Sponsored Subscriptions Check to see what resources and subscriptions your school might be engaging with that you never knew about! Universities often pay for subscription services for every student affiliated with their university, but if you do not know about it then how can you utilize it? Websites like Lynda.com are common, but there are other more unique websites that your school might already be paying for that you can use as well. If you are into theatre and want access to reading plays for free, check and see if your school is connected to Drama Online, an online database where you can read both classic and contemporary plays. Is there a particular topic you would like to know more about or do research on? See if your school is connected to Jstor, which stands for  Journal Storage, and is actually a huge online database or stable of a myriad of different scholarly articles or journal articles that have been published. Get in the know in whatever topic you choose by perusing the articles stored there. You can learn about history, science, mathematics, economics, you name it! The possibilities can seem endless. pexels.com Volunteer Sometimes you might not be able to work your dream job, but you still might be able to work for your dream company or in your dream field. Find a way to volunteer your time to an organization or in a field that is beneficial to you. Perhaps you want to get into marketing but need more experience in order to get a real job or more experience in order to make sure that marketing is really what you want to do. Find an organization that would be more than happy to have you do their marketing for them. You might not be paid, but you will certainly get some real, hands on experience that will benefit you and your career in the long run. And you can make some great connections and network in order to find a paying job in the future.