

Ask HN: How should students spend their summer? - hkr

I'm a CS student and I've been wondering how to make the <i></i>most<i></i> out of this upcoming summer.<p>Should I apply for internships, travel overseas and experience a different culture, or just stay on campus and enroll in summer classes? What would a successful student do?
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retroafroman
It's perhaps more simple to make this decision when you look at what your
goals are.

If you'd like to have fun, stick around, take a few classes and party. You
could graduate earlier, but into what? What happens after that?

If you'd like to jump into a job at a high paying, well known company after
graduation, you better start looking for internships with high paying, well
known companies.

If you'd like to be able to tell people you've been to another country, go to
another country. I don't say experience, because I personally think that takes
more time than a typical vacation and involves getting outside what you read
about in the travel books. It's up to you, but many people just want to be
able to say they travel, and have been outside the country, so if that's you-
do it. Believe it or not, if you want to experience somewhere cool and
interesting, sometimes you just have to travel just outside your hometown. You
could join half the USA and fly to a foreign country and stay in a hotel. You
could also get to know all the hiking or mountain biking trails, or raftable
rivers in the region you live. I like to think there are great experiences all
around, just have to spend the time to look for them.

Personally, I've done all three. Spent two years living and working in a
foreign country, interned one summer with a fairly well known tech startup,
and worked two summers on campus. I'm with a large, international company
working full time now. They all ended up kind of connecting, as one experience
generally helped lead me towards another.

Starting a business while working full or part time would make for a very
interesting and potentially worthwhile experience as well.

If you frame this question in terms of where you want to be (i.e. at a
startup, at a big company, in grad school, married or no, in a different part
of the world, in debt vs no debt), it will help you identify experiences that
can help you get there.

~~~
hkr
Thank you very much! I'm thinking of taking my exams early, travel for a week
or two, and get an internship. =)

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andreshb
Background: I started my first big startup in college, studied
abroad+traveled, and also took summer classes in my 4 year college career.

My #1 recommendation: Build something lots of people can use. You need a
portfolio of things you've built outside of school/work.

You can do this while you intern somewhere, go abroad, or take extra classes
in school (meh).

My personal preference would be to go abroad to a country where your own
currency goes very very far, so you can live/travel cheaply and also hack
while you are at it.

~~~
hkr
Thank you! I'm currently working on a startup--school is in the way, but I'm
working on it. Hopefully _that_ will be the main highlight of the year.

