Freshman Year — Wrapped
Parents of students who are wrapping up their first year in college feel a lot of emotions around this time . . . relief, pride, excitement, and worry, just to name a few. Once you and your student catch your breath, there are some things your student can take care of to ease the path into summer and the next school year:
Students should review their student portals to make sure they don’t have any outstanding fees. This is also a good time to double check that they renewed their FAFSA for the next year (this needs to be done annually while in college).
Students should also review their class selections for the next semester and make sure they have the classes they need. If they are hoping that space in a full class opens up, they should set a couple of alarms for each day so that they are checking availability regularly.
Schedule (and attend!) any needed medical and dental appointments.
If they don’t have a LinkedIn account set up, now’s the time. Setting an account up now and maintaining it will help them keep track of activities and establish connections with classmates. LinkedIn has a helpful guide for students starting to use the platform.
If you are a LinkedIn user, take some time to connect with your student’s friends.
Creating a resumé is a great summer project. Students often get too hung up on the format and don’t pay enough attention to the content. Students can use our Yearly Recap Tool to keep notes about activities, achievements, and connections. This information can be easily converted to a resumé format. They might even try using an AI resume creator to do it! (Just remind them to carefully review it.)
Some students have interesting and relevant summer internships, but most don’t. That’s okay! All job experience is valuable. Encourage your student to look for a job that teaches them a new skill, develops an existing skill, builds their interpersonal skills, or all of the above. Sometimes students minimize the value of jobs that aren’t directly relevant to a future career path, but that’s wrong. Future employers will value diverse experience, responsibility, people skills, and leadership. All of these things can be developed in a job that seems unrelated to a career path.
Encourage your students to set some personal goals for next year. They might not share them with you, but that’s okay. Some things to consider: join a new club, increase involvement in an existing club or organization, take on a leadership role, pick up a new hobby, and/or forge stronger relationships with professors. We encourage students to get outside of their comfort zones and take risks, but it’s a good idea to balance those things out with involvement in zero-barrier activities (i.e. no interview, audition, tryout, or other selective process to join).
And the most important tip of all . . . if your student is home for the summer, enjoy your time together!