Wake up, today’s the big day! The internship you’ve been looking forward to working for is finally going to tell you they accepted you, so what’re you waiting for? Hop off that bed, run over to your charging phone, and hit that email app right away. Refresh, and there it is! That beautiful email from the internship in your spam folder. Oh boy, open that email already!

Hello ____, while we acknowledge all of your accomplishments and hard work in the interview process, we have decided to pursue other applicants for the position. We hope you decide to give us another chance next summer.

...Well, that sucks. After weeks of anticipating and telling all of your buddies that this internship is practically yours to take, what’re you going to do now? You didn’t bother applying to other internships or jobs because you just knew this was a shoe-in. Looks like your entire summer is going to be a waste, right?

Wrong!

My job right now is to tell you all the ways to improve your summer, and make sure you come back to school next semester a changed person in some way, shape, or form. I am not talking about the kind of change that is, “Oh yeah, I watched all twelve seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, I pretty much know how to perform a surgery!” or, “I went on a couple of dates… with my Playstation 4… every single day during the summer.”

No, no. Perhaps we should just go straight ahead into what kind of changes I’m specifically talking about. Shall we?

Get Fit!

Not satisfied with the way you look in the mirror? Well, you have three months to finally make a change and do something about it. Now, getting fit is a lot more than just going to the gym a couple of weeks and doing some work outs. No, perhaps the harder part is cutting certain things out of your diet. You lose a lot more weight by eating less and healthier than just going to the gym everyday while still eating candy and cake.

Check out any local Planet Fitness or other gym in your neighborhood, figure out a workout plan with a quick Google search, and find out how you can start eating better (would probably be a good idea to no longer eat chocolate or drink soda for a while…). Here are some sites and channels that I personally use to help me improve on my health:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH9ciCUcWavMsFcAJ...
https://www.beachbody.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/JDCav24/videos
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness
https://www.reddit.com/r/BodyWeightFitness

Learn!

You have three months, why not learn something? We’re not talking “I learned how to dispose of a body from Breaking Bad!” No, no, that’s the exact opposite kind of learning I want to get across (although it is nice to know). I’ve been personally trying to learn some languages (French and Spanish) over the past couple of months, so por que tu no lo tratas tambien? Here are some resources:

www.duolingo.com (my personal favorite)
http://www.lang-8.com/
http://ielanguages.com/

If not, there are plenty of other things to learn. Plenty of universities offer free classes on anything you’d like, and other free resources online are there to provide anything you’d desire. Check out these places:

https://www.coursera.org/ (Free courses)
https://www.toastmasters.org/Resources/Public-Spea... (Public Speaking)
https://www.khanacademy.org/ (Practically everything)
https://www.codecademy.com/ (Coding)
http://www.musictheory.net/ (Music theory)
http://thecircusdictionary.com/moves/?category=jug... (Juggling)
https://brilliant.org/ (Math)
https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine... (Make a game)
http://mixxx.org/ (Music mixing)
http://unity3d.com/get-unity (Another game maker)
https://lmms.io/ (Make music)

Okay, there has to be something here that will interest you!

Go explore!

The world is there for you to go explore, so rather than spend your entire summer locked up in your house or your neighborhood, why not go around and check things out? Look up some nature state parks around your house to go check out, and just go sightseeing! Hop in a car, buy some stuff, grab some friends, and spend a day out hiking and/or exploring! See what the world has to offer around you. Here are some sites:

https://www.reddit.com/r/campingandhiking/
http://www.americanhiking.org/gear-resources/tips-...

If you happen to live in the NYC area, there are plenty of parks in the city alone for you to check out that is full of surprising nature and beauty in an urban place. Some parks I’m talking about (that isn’t Central Park) include the Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park and Pelham Bay Park, Queens’ Forest Park, Manhattan’s George Washington Bridge Park, and Staten Island’s Greenbelt. Give these places a chance!

Read and Write!

None of these things doing it for ya? Maybe reading and writing will cut it for you. There are plenty of resources out there for you to get into books, such as these:

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/wiki/books (Find that next great book for you to read)
https://librivox.org/ (Free audiobooks)
http://www.gutenberg.org/ (Free e-books)

After reading, why not try to start writing? Write a short story, write poetry, write a book, who cares! Just spend a portion of every day writing, and I promise you you’ll get better.

Well, that’s all I got. Now, you have no excuse to make your summer an interesting and awesome one without that internship and without television and gaming (except Game of Thrones, get on that ASAP).

Big thanks to reddit users FrancisMcKracken, St0neM0nkey and OtsukaTheCat for a lot of these resources.