As soon as school is over, it’s very tempting to launch straight into “summer mode.” The school year is highly structured – you need to be in class at a certain time each day, which means you have to go to bed and get up at a certain time. When summer starts, that’s all out the window. Suddenly you have lots of free time and you’re going to want to use some of this time to recharge and relax. But taking a little bit of time each day (or even each week) can help to keep you in the habit of being productive and get you ahead not only in school but in life.

Start Small
As soon as summer vacation starts, set aside a little bit of time each day to do something productive. This can vary from person to person – it might involve going through your school notebooks and reviewing the ones you think will be useful in the next year, or it might mean spending some time learning Spanish online if that’s something you’ve always meant to do. Setting aside even 30 minutes each day will help you to establish some kind of routine. This will make it much easier to stay in the habit of getting work done.

Stay Current
Reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, reading blogs and staying up on current events is a great habit to get into. Knowing what’s going on in the world from a young age will serve you very well by the time you’re finished high school. If your family subscribes to a newspaper, that’s a great way to start. Otherwise, the library carries more newspapers than you could hope to read, and every major newspaper has an online publication and even a Twitter feed.

Work or Volunteer
This is especially useful if you think you’ve chosen your future career. For example, if you know that you’d like to go into medicine, you might want to look for volunteer opportunities at local hospitals or clinics. If you want to work in architecture, you could look for a job handling reception for an architectural office. The Ontario government also has a great resource for students looking for job, co-op, or internship opportunities: http://www.gojobs.gov.on.ca/JumpStart.asp

Here’s wishing you a happy and productive summer 2013!