Natty Leach, Associate Director A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across Mike Boyd’s Youtube channel dedicated to learning new, often frivolous, skills. The first video I came across, for instance, focused on an MIT physicist’s peculiar ability to quickly make a dotted line across a chalk board.
For the chalk trick, it only takes Mike a few minutes; other videos chronicle upwards of 8 hours of attempts. Regardless of the task at hand, every video shows him starting from scratch with what some might consider embarrassing results. And that’s what I found most impressive about these videos—through every failure, no matter how public, he betters himself until reaching the goal in mind. So this summer, I recommend that you do something completely new and different, even if it feels embarrassing to try at first. Whether you’re busy at a new internship or just taking a break this summer, do something you’ve never done before, no matter how big or small, and relish in eventually conquering it. If you’re not as bold as Mike and would rather do some trial and error before hitting the big stage, here are a couple of projects that you can easily do, embarrassment-free, from the comfort of your couch: A small thing to easily familiarize yourself with this summer: Handshake – Career Services’ new job and internship platform. 
Mastering Handshake will only take you a couple of minutes. Check out our Handshake Hints on getting started. If there’s anything I can stress, it’s completing your profile and marking some career interests. Handshake’s homepage shows you opportunities that are molded around your interests so the more choose, the more you’ll see. A bigger project you could tackle: Anything on Lynda, a tutorial database that’s free to Penn students. 
Lynda has a ton great, skill-oriented tracks you can follow along with. Most videos are digestibility small (10-20 minutes) while full collections can total 40+ hours of hands-on training. Last year, I took a few courses on drawing, game design, and JavaScript.