After winter break here at Princeton people everywhere are trying to figure out their plans for the summer.
I spent the summer after my first year interning for a nonprofit in Boston for ten weeks, and I loved it. My internship was part of a program called Princeton Internships in Civic Service, or PICS for short. PICS offers internships at a variety of nonprofits across the nation; when I came across Boston SCORES, I knew it was perfect for me. SCORES is a nonprofit that works with students from elementary to high school, integrating poetry, spoken word and soccer into its after-school curriculum. This quite literally checked all the boxes for me: I love soccer, and two of the things I was most passionate about in high school were working with kids and leading my slam poetry club.
I greatly enjoyed my summer in Boston. I stayed with a wonderful and kind host family, and worked with amazing kids every day (and also played so much soccer with them!). I was also able to apply the knowledge I learned in one of my computer sciences classes, “Computer Science: An interdisciplinary Approach (COS 126)” to create a program that streamlined a time-intensive task.
Although I missed my friends, I wasn’t lonely! Princeton organized events that brought all local Boston interns together, and the regional alumni association was constantly involved and active. I was also given an alumni mentor who met with me throughout the summer. Through PICS, I met new friends, ate ramen at niche Cambridge restaurants and biked along the Charles River. One friend and I even road-tripped to back to New Jersey on a whim to watch the Fourth of July fireworks on top of the Prudential Center.
There are countless other summer opportunities at Princeton as well: my best friends went outside the country, taking Global Seminars in Berlin; teaching high schoolers in Vietnam; and immersing themselves in Argentine culture in Buenos Aires. One of my friends spent the summer with lemurs in Madagascar as well through the Princeton Environmental Institute. Princeton also offers opportunities with startups in New York, Tel-Aviv and Shanghai. They also offer opportunities to conduct research with professors on-campus.
Whatever you choose to do, you can be sure that you’ll find the summer as rewarding and enjoyable an experience as I did, and there will be people there for you every step of the way.