The bell rings to be released on the last day of school and most students in the building have one thing on their mind: summer vacation. Many look forward to having some time to lounge around and take it easy, while others wait excitedly to travel the world with family. Some even take the chance to get a head start on their career. There is a multitude of ways to spend the summer away from school.

Senior Braden Middleton is taking advantage of the time off by traveling to Guatemala for a mission trip.
“We’ve been really excited to do it,” Middleton said. “We, as a group, decided that we wanted to do some large trip to begin with, and then we decided that we should do a mission trip because it was all of my church friends hanging out. We’ve been excited to see new places and travel, but also do it for a good reason.”
Middleton plans on not only enjoying the change of scenery, but also putting effort towards a good cause.
“We’re helping out local churches down there in Guatemala, an area just outside of the city, with … whatever they need,” Middleton said. “We don’t know exactly what we do until around two weeks prior because there are more teams that go, so we’ll find out what other teams did and then we’ll figure out what we’re doing.”
While taking a mission trip can be a fun experience, there are other ways to enjoy the summer. Sophomore Jaden James will be sharing his break with extended family.
“I’m having a lot of visitors from my hometown come down…,” James said. “I have a couple friends coming in August. [I’m also] going to Indiana to see more family; … we try to go down there every once in a while.”
Summer may look different for those working toward

s their career. College sophomore Maya McKone-Sweet has planned an internship to do just this.
“[The internship is] manufacturing and engineering, which means the team I’m working on is in charge of keeping up a few lines of production for their implantable devices, which are pacemakers,” McKone-Sweet said. “While I don’t have my job for the summer yet, it will probably include working on some machine on the operating line and figuring out how to make it more efficient, or how to fix it if it is broken, or figure out a new way to manufacture a part of that line.”
While internships can be a jumpstart towards a career, they can also be enjoyable.
“It’s both something I’m really passionate about and something that I want to learn more about,” McKone-Sweet said. “But it’s also a step forward in having professional experience that will allow for greater opportunities when I am entering the workforce full time.”
To combat summertime boredom, Middleton suggests finding a hobby.
“I get bored sitting around in my house all day so I like to be out doing stuff,” Middleton said. “I think if you can learn something more or teach somebody else something over the summer then you can be more correct with your time.”