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<p>I missed this the first time around too. Both my kids only did a couple of after school activities and no sports so they had a lot of free time.</p>
<p>My older son used it to become a computer geek. He ended up doing some programming for a chemistry prof who lived in the neighborhood. They got talking at a party and the project the prof wanted done to analyze some data my son said would be easy, though none of the prof’s grad students had a clue how to go about it. He also had enough spare time to work for my brother’s company doing stuff that ended up looking very good on his resume.</p>
<p>My younger son, more of a slacker, got interested in origami. He started off making earrings for friends, but got good enough that they ended up getting sold through a local gallery as well. He also helped our neighborhood association president archive papers - this involved scanning and then indexing the papers. He learned a lot about the neighborhood and wrote a very nice essay about how he felt like a historian as he went through these first hand sources and experienced both their immediacy and what was missing.</p>
<p>I also agree that as a parent of a sophomore you can not think about colleges for another year.</p>