After 10 months of learning, work, and growth throughout the school year, we finally get to enjoy our long awaited summer break from school. However, with this break comes the “summer slide” where we gradually lose the knowledge and skills we built over the year. Therefore, if you’re looking to not only retain what you’ve learned as well as improve, here are 5 ways to avoid the summer slide.

1. Research: Anytime you are going to a new place, whether this be a city, state or burger joint down the street, learn something new about it. This sounds fairly unhelpful, but it’s a skill that you’ve used all year: gathering more information. So keep learning about new things, and find articles and some history behind their origins. It only takes one Google search.
2. Reading: One of the very few activities that will actually expand your IQ is reading. It isn’t that hard to find a new book or novel (such as your summer reading assignment) that you might want to read.
3. Limiting your tech time.  Technology is now a major part of daily life, yet we should still try to limit the amount of time per day that we choose to use our phones instead being outside. The time that you aren’t using to play fortnite can be used to take a hike or be productive.
4. Get a Job: A large of High School is supposed to be about preparing you for the workplace. So a good way to get ahead, earn some money, and keep the brain working is for you to be working as well. It doesn’t have to be incredibly committed, just something basic to help you save up or spend throughout the upcoming year.
5. Summer Assignments: For most honors classes, the teacher will be assigning work over the summer. Make sure that you do them throughout summer, rather than waiting until August 17th (the day before school starts) to get it done. Using good time management will help you carry on that skill in years to come.

Let’s try to keep those scores up, and start the 2018-2019 school off on the right foot.