During summers when I was in high school, I often felt torn—how much of the summer should I spend working to save more for college (be wary of loans and college debt)? How much working to save the world (how exactly I’d do this was always a little vague)? How much just spending time connecting with friends and family and living my life as fully as I could (if you’ve never been to Montana, a summer can easily fly by on the rivers and lakes and mountains)?
In this post, I’m going to assume that you’ve wrestled with some similar questions. And I’m going to walk you through some of what I would’ve loved to have understood back then, to help me decide how to spend my high school summers. (And I’m probably going to have a few more parentheticals.)
If you just want some options for stuff to do, you can skip down to here. But if you want to understand more about how you as a human being function, and how that understanding can lead you to living a happier life, read on.
The science of living a better life
One of the most useful things I’ve read about over the past couple decades (wow … how did that happen?) is Martin Seligman’s work on positive psychology (along with many, many other great scientists, but I’m trying to avoid this post becoming a list of amazing people).
What is positive psychology? Seligman has a great TED Talk on it here, and Courtney Ackerman has a longer breakdown here, but the shorter version is here:
Seligman and many others in the positive psychology field (whom I’m going to lovingly refer to from here on out as pos-psychos, because at Stanford, we had a tradition of building abbreviated names for everything, often unnecessarily, and also that name makes me smile) saw that psychology had done a pretty amazing job so far at understanding what makes people miserable and how many mental health disorders work. It also found ways to make people less miserable and learned how to treat or even cure some of those disorders. And that’s really, really good news for a lot of humans.
But the pos-psychos also saw that psychology during the past century hadn’t done a great job of understanding things like strengths, or genius, or “happiness.” And so they began to build “a scientific approach to studying human thoughts, feelings, and behavior, with a focus on strengths instead of weaknesses, building the good in life instead of repairing the bad, and taking the lives of average people up to “great” instead of focusing solely on moving those who are struggling up to “normal” (Christopher Peterson, 2008).
Or here’s the really short version:
“Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living” (Peterson again).
What does all that have to do with how you spend your summer?
Well ...
“Happy” … meaning what, exactly?
I want to talk you through five different ways to think about how to live your summer, based on five different elements that contribute to “happiness.” Then, I want to give you a bunch of options to pursue those different happinesses (which is actually a word).
I put “happiness” in quotes because it’s a pretty nebulous word. But I’d guess when you refer to “happiness,” you don’t just mean in-the-moment emotions, though those are valuable; rather, you’d also mean things like flourishing, or joy, or purpose—things that connect to your sense of well-being.
Seligman has proposed five elements that contribute to well-being:
Positive emotion—as in, ebullience. Good cheer. Love. Joy. Compassion. Smiley times. Actual lols.
Engagement—as in, states of flow. Being utterly immersed in what you’re doing. Time ceases to exist.
Relationships—as in, with friends, family, partners, the wider community.
Meaning—as in, having a sense that you belong to or are working toward something bigger than yourself. Through professions, causes, creation, beliefs, volunteering, community ...
Accomplishment—as in, achievement, or competence, or even mastery. Reaching a goal. Striving for something, even if just for the sake of improvement.
To my mind, it’s useful to understand that, in terms of reported overall well-being, meaning and engagement have a bigger impact than positive emotion. But all of these play a part.
Understand your core values
Before we look at the different ways you can pursue “happiness” with your summer, take 5 minutes and do this Values Exercise.
Why?
Because having a clearer, specific sense of your core values can help you think more specifically about how and why you want to pursue what you want to pursue. In particular, feeling guided by your personal values will directly contribute to your sense of meaning and purpose (and people who feel they have purpose live longer, have greater life satisfaction, and experience fewer health problems—so do the Values Exercise).
And, before we move on, take a quick moment to reflect on whether any of the values you chose aren’t really yours—as in, you chose them because you feel like you’re supposed to value them, or they’re values you think other people want you to have. And maybe throw those away. And pick ones that reflect you.
Set? Great.
5 ways to spend your high school summer
At the risk of stating the obvious, please keep in mind that you don’t have to pick only one of these—you’ll likely get far more out of pursuing things related to all five. That said, you probably have limited time. Or if not, let me know how that works.
A Pleasant Summer
Again, positive emotion. This one is super subjective, and you know the things that give you smiley-face times far better than I (because I’m just guessing), but here are some things to play with:
Travel somewhere you’ve never been before. And it doesn’t have to be super far away. Click here to find places to camp near you. Or talk your family into using this road trip planner and go see some weird stuff. (Pro tip: Actually check the box at the link above that says “weird stuff.”)
Jump on Atlas Obscura and see what cool, hidden, or unusual things might be near you.
Get out of your room and into the world. This goes back to that Values Exercise, but for me, time on the beach or with the trees or in the mountains always (I mean actually always) makes me happier.
Just keep doing the thing you love to do, but do it more. And as you do it, practice mindfully savoring the experience.
What’s great is that you can actually get better at feeling these positive emotions. As in, you aren’t simply stuck experiencing life as you do. For example, here are 21 exercises to make you better at savoring life. Or listen to uplifting or inspirational music (this one comes with a lighthouse, and this one has hobbits) or speeches. Or start keeping a gratitude journal. Or just spend time with people you care about (I can’t link to them).
An Engaged Summer
Take this Strengths Test. It’ll take you about 15 minutes. Then, build/focus on activities that engage those strengths, and practice reframing experiences in terms of those strengths. If you’re going to have a summer job or internship (more on those in a bit), focus on those that allow you to engage more of your top strengths.
But you can also create engagement for yourself by reframing experiences, by which I mean that you can find ways to shift how you think about and experience activities that might not seem engaging. For example, if one of your top character strengths is social intelligence, and you’re working a summer job bagging groceries to help pay bills, you can reframe your work by thinking about how your interactions with customers can put them at ease or be a highlight of their day.
Some other ways you can find engagement:
Read some long-form articles. Here’s a pretty amazing place to start.
If you aren’t screened-out, explore some TED Talks via this spreadsheet of 2,750 of them (as of right now).
Duolingo: Learn a language!
Read up on 8 ways to create “flow,” according to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Then, employ these methods with your summer activities.
A Relational Summer
How can you use some of your summer to develop stronger positive relationships?
Join an in-person class that interests you, whether that’s through a local community college, or ceramics lessons, or surfing, or survival school.
Find a group of people with shared interests. For example, join a new community by engaging with a local organization that cares for local wildlands (grab that Values Exercise again). Check out meetup.com. There are probably people within miles of you already doing that thing.
Ask. Here are 100 questions that can actually build connections.
Reconnect. It can be easy to let relationships fray some. Fortunately, you have many, many tools to reach out and rebuild.
A Meaningful Summer
Because meaning is generally the most powerful of these factors in someone’s sense of well-being, and because it may feel more nebulous than, say, relationships, I’m going to spend a bit more time discussing it.
The pos-psychos generally define “meaning” as having a sense that you belong to or are working toward something bigger than yourself. There are many ways you can develop that sense, but one particularly useful lens in this regard through which to view your summer is Effective Altruism (EA).
Over the last few decades, some of the best thinkers in the world (like this guy) have dedicated their lives (and brains) to figuring out how we can try to make sure we’re doing the most good with the resources we have. Since all lives are of equal value, how do we try to ensure we’re alleviating the most suffering we can?
This is the heart of Effective Altruism.
For example, Peter Singer points out that, while it’s admirable to train a seeing-eye dog for a blind person, that training (and the training for the blind person to use the dog) tends to cost around $40,000 (U.S. dollars). With that money, you could cure somewhere between 400 and 2,000 blind people of trachoma in a developing country. So if we have limited resources, we should probably go with the second option.
That’s Effective Altruism in a nutshell.
So (without getting neurotic about it), think about some ways you can do good better (that’s not a typo) with your summer.
Do one good deed a day for 30 days, then blog about it.
Explore 15 ways to find purpose. Jump over to the positive psychology website and explore both what we mean by “a meaningful life” and ways to find/create purpose and meaning.
Use your Values Exercise. Explore ways to pursue a creative activity that centers on some of the top 3 values.
Raise money and donate it to Give Well (charities evaluated based on EA criteria).
Join an organization/campaign on Do Something, which offers dozens of causes that you probably care about and can get involved with.
Self-directed projects can be a great way to pursue something meaningful. You can dive into building your own non-profit, if that appeals to you, or you can simply think about the needs people in your local community face, and how you could use your skills and insights to help meet those needs.
If you want some guidance on how to create and develop a self-directed project (over the summer and perhaps beyond), check out our Uncommon Summer program, which helps students clarify core values, build capacity for self-direction and leadership, and develop a project that aligns with your goals.
An Accomplished Summer
Whether you’re focused on a specific goal, or simply achieving for achieving’s sake:
Take a class at a local community college. So that a) you don’t have to take it during the school year, and b) you’ve got something that looks super fancy on your transcript.
Do what Kevin McMullin from CollegeWise suggests:
“Set a goal that you’re 99% certain you won't be able to achieve this summer. Then go all out and try to achieve it as though your life depended on it. You'll either get there or get much, much closer than you were at the beginning of the summer.” #FailBetterTake an online course in something that fascinates you. Like Berkeley’s “Science of Happiness” course. Or here are 1,200 free online courses from top universities. Looking for something more practical? Lynda.com has over 5,000 courses in everything from How to Draw Good and Evil Comic Book Characters to How to Market and Monetize on YouTube. And don’t even get me started on Coursera.
Create your own online course. What’s something you can do so well that you could teach people? Ethan’s brother’s friend, for example, teaches design sketching.
If you want some tools to help set and pursue goals, head to this link for 20 goal-setting templates and worksheets, and a discussion of different types of goals.
Summer internships
Because an internship might fall under any or all of these categories, I’m going to list them here separately, and, because there’s a ton to say about them, link to our how-to guide to internships.
As a bonus, applications for competitive summer programs can nicely prepare you for writing your college essays.
How high school summers impact college applications & admissions
To clarify, because people often ask: There is no single program or experience that’ll guarantee a student’s admission to [insert great college here].
It’s important to actually think holistically—to be able to reflect on the greater meaning an experience had for a student, on how it connects to a cohesive story, so an admission team understands the impact it had on the student’s life. And it’s also important to be clear how it integrates with other aspects of the student’s work and actions. It’s generally the cumulative experiences, rather than a one-off, that make a difference. Colleges like seeing a story arc, with summers building on one another. If you’re reading this early in your high school career, think of summers progressing through stages of curiosity and exploration, then depth, then refinement.
In this episode of the CEG podcast, Jill Tipograph talks about varying your experiences.
Explore different opportunities. Think about ways that you can use summer to grow further into being the human you want to be. Set yourself up to explore possible majors or career options.
But don’t think of these activities as isolated to summer.
For example, if you take a writing program over the summer, do something like contributing to the school newspaper during the year.
Use summer to build skills (in particular, communication and critical thinking skills) that will be most important to employers in the future and that you can reflect on in your applications.
Jill and Paul Kaser co-authored a survey in which they asked 100 colleges what summer opportunities matter most on an application. If you want a copy of the full survey, you can check out their site here (you’ll have to enter your email address to download it).
It has a lot of great info, but here are some key takeaways regarding what types of experiences add the greatest value to an application:
| Experience | % Rating “Greatest” or “Significant Value” |
| Internships | 68% |
| Independent Research | 64% |
| Traditional Paid Employment/Job | 56% |
| Academic Program (for credit) | 52% |
| Language Study/Immersion (abroad) | 52% |
| Arts/Theatre/Music | 48% |
| Community Service (in local community) | 48% |
Next steps
Since I just threw a ton of stuff at you, I wanted to give you a few clear steps as options for how to implement some of the above. But real quick, before I do, I want to acknowledge that designing a summer is a luxury not everyone can take advantage of. Plenty of you have responsibilities or circumstances that preclude much of the above. In such cases, I’d love to offer the advice to simply file this understanding away (or even bookmark this page) with the thought of implementing some of these things at a later date, to build toward the life you want.
With that said, a few next steps:
First, if you didn’t before, work through that Values Exercise. Having a clearer sense of those will especially help with your sense of meaning and engagement.
Next, spend some time thinking about what elements (pleasant, engaged, relational, meaningful, accomplished) appeal to you most. How do you want to build your summer? In particular, reflect on what you think you’ll want to look back on after it’s done.
Then start exploring some of the options listed within each section above (and/or also think about how you can use that framing to explore further). Plan out and design a summer that checks the boxes you most want.
I hope all the above gave you not just a lot of practical possibilities for your summer, but also a stronger lens through which to view those possibilities. Have fun diving in, exploring, engaging, relating, achieving, and finding some meaning.
Andrew Simpson has worked as an educator, consultant, and curriculum writer for the past 15 years, and earned degrees from Stanford in Political Science and Drama. He feels most at home on mountain tops and in oceans.
Top Values: Insight/Growth | Truth | Integrity
