#HonorsProblems-Going Home for the Summer

Today’s #HonorsProblems post is written by Kayleigh Ryherd, a senior and SPA majoring in psychology!
Summer plans got you down? Dreading returning to a dinky hometown with fewer traffic lights than Dunkins’? I, Kayleigh Ryherd, SPA Extraordinaire, have the blog post for you! However, everyone has different goals for the summer, so I’ll try to cover a few of them.
GOAL 1: I want to make a lot of money. As a college student who can only hold full-time employment for the short summer months, you may feel discouraged when applying for jobs. Lucky for you, though, with the warming weather comes a multitude of seasonal jobs. Apply for something outside – through the local Parks Department (bonus: pretend you know Leslie Knope) or at a summer camp. Often, jobs like that do a lot of cross-training, so if someone from a different but related department calls in sick, you might be able to pick up their hours.

GOAL 2: I want to do something in my major.
Email a professor. Really. I’m serious. Just because you don’t see any job listings for openings in a lab doesn’t mean that there aren’t any, especially if you’re willing to work as a volunteer. The summer after my sophomore year, I picked a random professor whose research interested me off of the UIUC website and asked to work in her lab, and it worked! And you can do this by reaching out to any professor who’s research interests you, in any field. This can help you get preliminary experience for when you are aiming for goal 3…

GOAL 3: I want to make a lot of money AND do something in my major.
Apply for an NSF REU. These programs stick you with a mentor who does research that interests you while helping you out significantly financially, across all sorts of fields of study. My REU paid for travel, room and board, GRE prep materials, and three course credits in addition to a sizable stipend. This is all because they want to invest in the promising undergraduate students – and who better than UHPers?

In short, there are always way more summer opportunities than there seem to be; a lot of the time all it takes is just to ask for them.
H.A.G.S!