When those last final exams are returned to the professors, college students head for home and they don’t look back. A year at college can be mentally taxing, and by the time summer appears on the horizon, everyone’s ready to put their brains on auto-pilot and coast through the break. While students are encouraged to get their much needed R&R over the summer, they’re also encouraged not to let all those new smarts vanish.
Johns Hopkins Center for Summer Learning has conducted much research on the summer learning gap, or summer learning loss, and found that students of all ages do in fact experience learning loss if they don’t engage in educational activities during the summer.
Engaging your brain doesn’t mean serious study sessions like you do in school, it just means doing more than drooling in front of reruns and sleeping by the pool.
Keep your brain well conditioned and ready for fall semester by:
- Reading by the pool instead of napping
- Playing sudoku, doing crosswords, or playing word games like Scrabble
- Writing a journal, blog or starting your great novel
- Taking a virtual class online in a subject not offered at your school
Read on to learn more about how to stay smart during college summer vacation.
posted on August 18th, 2009
by Brandi, Senior Editor
Tags: College Advice, summer break, summer vacation
Posted in Careers, College Advice | 4 Comments »
August 9th, 2010 at 10:59 am
[...] Avoid Brain Drain on Summer Vacation [...]
July 14th, 2010 at 8:14 am
[...] Avoid Brain Drain on Summer Vacation [...]
June 28th, 2010 at 1:04 am
[...] 5. Avoid summer learning loss. Everyone knows that you tend to lose some of the knowledge you gained between August and May during your summer break. This unfortunate phenomenon is called Summer Learning Loss. However, if you keep your brain active all summer long by taking a summer class, you are less likely to fall suffer from summer brain drain. [...]
May 12th, 2010 at 11:04 am
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