Travel Smart: 3 College Prep Tips For The Holiday Season

College preparation and winter break might be considered mutually exclusive, especially if your family plans include travel. Plan ahead with these three things students can do even on a long plane or car ride.
1. Free Rice
This first suggestion is ideal for long commutes, intercontinental flights, or any time you have 5 minutes. It’s an easy way to improve your vocabulary, even on an airplane.
Free Rice is a free, multiple-choice vocabulary game you can play on your phone. The mobile app or website presents you with a word and asks you to choose a synonym. If you enter a word incorrectly, the correct choice is highlighted in green. Free Rice uses computer-assisted technology, which means it adjusts the words to your level of proficiency.
For every vocabulary question you answer, Free Rice generates digital grains of rice, which automatically convert to donations by private sponsors. The funds go to the United Nations World Food Program, which won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.
Vocabulary training is a challenge because almost no one can master 50 words a day. But if you play Free Rice for just a few minutes a day, you’ll rapidly progress from “feeble” to “jubilant.” Yes, those are sample words on Free Rice.
MORE FOR YOU
2. Audiobooks for AP and IB History
If your family is flying to a faraway vacation spot or traveling for hours to see friends and family, don’t just doze the time away. Before you leave home, or even at the airport, key up a playlist of audiobooks.
Audible.com offers over half a million audiobooks for sale, including the ones suggested below. Audible titles can also be purchased on the Amazon website. Download your choice to your phone or other device, so that you can listen independently of wifi. That will eliminate variation in audio quality as well as internet connection charges.
Unlike history textbooks that can weigh down a suitcase, audiobooks weigh nothing. And rather than feeling like you are just hammering away at the same old assignments, you can enjoy a bit of holiday spirit by choosing entertaining supplements to your school courses.
Historical Fiction
Students taking World History can choose from a wealth of novels written close to the time they are studying. For example, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, set at the outbreak of the French Revolution, chronicles violence, revenge, and love that culminate at the guillotine. The grand sweep of World War Two is conveyed by Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, with its extensive portrayals of engagements in North Africa and the Pacific.
History
Narrative nonfiction is another way to extend our understanding beyond our own time and place to massive—and often massively misunderstood—world events. Jack Weatherford’s Ghenghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World might change everything you thought you knew about the terrifying expansion of the Mongol Empire.
Any of these suggested books can occupy a student during hours of travel, dampening the sound of airplane engines or the antics of younger siblings.
3. Podcasts for Business, Economics and STEM
For shorter bursts of learning through listening, podcasts fit the bill. Podcasts are usually half an hour to a hour long, though of course students can binge an entire series. Podcasts bring cutting-edge news from experts in many fields to a general audience and they’re free.
Business
Students who dream of Harvard Business School can tune in to “HBR IdeaCast.” For a business angle on the interplay of geopolitics and global trade, listen to, for example, Professor Srividya Jandyala of ESSEC business school explain “Why Business Leaders Need Political Diplomacy Skills Now.” Harvard Professor Steven Pinker and the CEOs of Standard Bank and Walmart appear on recent episodes. HEC Lausanne Professor Patrick Haack advises, “What To Do When Fake News Targets Your Company.” Stephen Dubner talks about “20 Years of Freakonomics: How It Changed Business.”
Economics
“Freakonomics Radio,” a podcast, builds on the success of the book that brought behavioral economics into mainstream academia. By applying principles of economic analysis of data from unexpected sources, “Freakonomics” uncovers surprising patterns and yields sometimes unnerving answers to such questions as “Is Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Its Greatest Asset?” and “Why Does Tipping Still Exist?”
The International Monetary Fund brings world experts to discuss their views. Recent episodes include Princeton University Economics Professor Swati Bhatt on “Where Startups Do Roam,” Harvard University Economics Professor Kenneth Rogarth on “Dollar Dominance,” and the deputy division chief of the IMF’s legal department “Chady El Khoury on the Virtual Reality of Financial Crime.”
STEM
STEM students, too, have audio options. For serious science made accessible to non- or not-yet-professionals, Professor Sean Carroll of Johns Hopkins University hosts a weekly podcast, “Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts and Ideas.” Recent episodes include conversations with CalTech Professor “Ryan Patterson on the Physics of Neutrinos,” Carnegie Mellon Professor “Kevin Zollman on Game Theory, Signals and Meaning” and New Science magazine editor “Anil Ananthaswamy on the Mathematics of Neural Nets and AI.”
“Houston, We Have a Podcast!” is the official podcast of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Learn about “Building the International Space Station” or listen to real astronauts discuss the challenges of their missions.
Future biologists can choose from a wealth of programs on “Microbe.TV: Science Shows for Everyone.” From “Immune Booster” through “This Week in Neuroscience” to the “Infectious Disease Puscast,” students can listen to the latest from prominent scientists at leading universities and research centers. This might even suggest possible places students might want to apply for their undergraduate studies.
Keep Listening
Once regular classes begin again, Free Rice, audiobooks and podcasts are a great way to make use of the time students may be spending on a school bus on the commute to school. However, students who commute on public transportation should be careful not to get so lost in these fascinating narratives that they lose track of their surroundings.
College-bound teenagers need to learn to look for blocks of time, whether short or long, that can be put to better use than they might have thought. By starting now over the holidays, students can build habits they can continue during the school year.