Summer vacations are a time of leisure and fun in the sun, until you move to college to essentially ruin your life forever. But jokes aside, summer vacations are an essential time for students, engineering ones in particular, as they can use this break to enhance their portfolio. Here are some ideas for engineering students to utilize their summer vacations effectively.
Line Up An Internship
Many students, especially 3rd-year ones, try to land a summer internship in a related industry or any reputable organization. This helps them to get exposure to the real world and possibly pave the way for a future job at the same place by building some links and connections.
Take An Online Course
Try to take some online courses on Edx/coursera/MIT OCW. You can find countless courses regarding all aspects of engineering on these sites.
Read On Some Specialized Niche
If you want to move towards a particular field in your engineering course, you can start researching in this free time. You can download some good textbooks from countless resources to gain a real edge and a solid theoretical base in the future. For example, electrical engineers can go through Microelectronic circuit by Sedra/Smith or Fundamentals of Photonics by Bahaa Saleh, which provide a great base for future studies in these fields.
Start A Summer Project
One of the greatest struggles for a young engineer is to find his/her field of passion. A great way to embark on this journey is to try as many options as possible by attempting summer projects. Countless resources and DIY project websites are available, such as instructables.com where you can find the project of your choice which can be built using minimum supplies. You should document all your work and the problems faced, which will help you to learn more about the process of designing something, while providing a great reason to learn new skills and softwares like analysis, use of simulation tools, debugging, using lab equipment, and many more.
Become Lab Assistant
You might be taking a break, but your professors and other researchers aren’t! So why not make use of this time and ask your professors to let you help out in his lab or on a project? You can opt for a research area of your interest, and besides learning about a real lab environment, you would also get a real insight into the intricacies of the world of research and decide whether you are built for this life or not.
Revise And Substantiate
If nothing else works, you can simply pick up your course books and brush up on core concepts. Best engineers are those who have a solid theoretical background in the core subjects of their disciplines, so it’s worth the effort to try and form a solid background.
Do you have any other advice for the engineering students that we might have missed? Let us know in the comments’ section below!