What I Did for My Summer Vacation

Let's have a show of hands: Who out there remembers being an elementary school student and going back to school each year in the fall to have one of your first assignments be a picture/show-and-tell/report/essay about how you spent your summer vacation? "This is me, my sister, my brother, my mom, and my dad standing next to Old Faithful in Yellowstone." "I got these Mickey Mouse ears when we went to Disneyland." "For my summer vacation I played Little League baseball and hit a home run."

When you're a kid, summer vacation is the best. You can sleep in. There's suddenly lots of fruit to snack on. The ice cream truck comes down the street every other day. You can play in the sprinklers, or go to the pool. There are parades and fireworks. All of the kids in the neighborhood stay up late to play night games. Mom and Dad make you ride in the car forever, but there's lots of fun stuff to do when you finally get to wherever the family is going. It's the best 12 weeks out of the year.

Sometime during the teenage years, most people take their first job over the long break from late May to late August, and then summer starts to be a little less magical. By the time you move on up to adulthood, summer is still a nice time of year, but no longer a magical wonderland between school grades. Some of the activities and seasonal perks that you remember are still there. But you definitely don't have weeks on end to roam free and do whatever you feel like doing. Unless you become a teacher, most regular jobs don't come with a summer break.

On the other hand, just because you have to go to work each day doesn't mean that you can't still get things done on the side. There's almost always a list of summer projects to be done while the daylight hours are longer and the weekends seem to become almost automatically more productive. That's why you should make this the summer that your either launch your IT career, or take it to the next level — by getting a certification. Get the most out of those extra hours with a crash course in self improvement.

TestOut Continuing Education offers the best IT training and certification courseware on the market. Once you sign up, you have access to world-class training whenever you need it, wherever you need it. Got a computer or tablet and a connection to the internet? You're all set! We'll even let you try it out free for seven days. One week is all it will take to start you on the path to better employment, a better salary, and better career satisfaction. And the next time that someone asks what you did with your summer vacation? You'll have an answer almost as good as the time that Mom and Dad took everyone to Disneyland.