A passion project is an undertaking whose main purpose is to highlight your skills that are backed by your enthusiasm and research. It doesn’t necessarily have any professional or educational tie-up, is usually pursued out of interest, and yet favors your cause.
To put it in simpler terms, if someone asks you what motivates your thought process or what your skills are, you do not recall the same but show a live example of it. A passion project can serve multiple purposes, If you are a professional engaged in a passion project, it will help you channel your passion positively, regardless of its alignment with your profession. However, if you are a student, you can use your passion project to forward your cause in admissions and interviews or just keep the creative juice flowing.
In this article, we talk about the various ideas you can opt for and how you can go about them. But before investing in it, let us quickly discuss the advantages of this concept to motivate you a bit further.
Advantages of Passion Projects
A passion project is a hobby, and the idea behind it is to ensure convert your hobby into a live project that aids your career and profession. In other words, what if your passion project turns out to be a perfect setup where it becomes a hobby that makes money?
So the possibilities are limitless, and let us further discuss some advantages of it.
- Portfolio: The world is slowly shifting beyond the assessment of the academic credentials of a candidate. If you have a line of work that you can show for your skills, you automatically become a preferred candidate, be it your admissions or interviews.
- Commitment: A passion project is not something that you can get done within one day. You might be done with the entire setup of the project in a day, but the skills you acquired took you years to master. So a well-designed project will not only showcase your skills but highlight your dedication towards your passion.
- Creativity: A passion project is the biggest creative outlet you can have. Regardless of your profession or academic degree, your investment in the project is a creative pursuit where you get to showcase your skills and be aligned with your creative side.
- Uniqueness: The pursuit of a passion project will not only help you explore your creative side but also help you lead the crowd. You will always be a step ahead since your project will be the one talking for you and ensuring your skills get the right platform and attention.
Different Types of Passion Project Ideas
One of the best things about a passion project is it is not limited by one particular idea, profession, or grade. You can be a high school student or a college student and invest in a passion project. You can opt for an idea that is going to help you in one trait or the other when it comes to showcasing your talent. I have picked up some quick ideas for you to push yourself in the right direction and jump on the hobby bandwagon.
- Creative Arts: You can dive into a passion project by investing yourself in creative arts, which will help you explore your creative side. It might be painting, animation, books, music, or filmmaking.
- Technology: Any technological innovation by you will ensure that you stand out in the crowd. Making technology easier and accessible for all or helping people use technology to aid their lives can even ensure that your hobby becomes your profession.
- Public Speaking: How you present your opinions and express your views in front of people can help you score brownie points in your passion project venture.
- Community Service: Any act of service will not only highlight your empathetic side but also help you pursue a good cause that aligns with your area of interest.
- Entrepreneurial Programs: Being able to pull off an entrepreneurial venture regardless of the phase that you are in of your academics or career is always going to highlight your leadership skills and quality.
5 Passion Project Ideas for High School
High School is your pre-game before you jump into the bigger responsibilities in life, like college and eventually a job. So investing in a passion project that keeps you motivated, and at the same time, highlights your skills will aid you greatly in the coming important interviews of your life.
You need to choose an idea that will justify your reason for opting for it. For example, if you are someone who takes pride in their painting skills, you should opt for an idea that ensures you get to showcase those skills properly. Let us check a few such ideas.
1. Art and Culture
The best way to explore your creative side in high school is to make yourself more involved with art or expose yourself with activities that tend to nurture your cultural curiosity. Some of such activities can be:
- You can have your magazine or have a newsletter highlighting the major changes happening around the world or in your school.
- The best way to highlight the influence of cultural movements in our present day society is to talk about eminent personalities. You can hence create a memorabilia in the form of scrap books or slide shows.
- Art has always been a medium of resistance and onset of new cultural beginnings, and you can highlight the same by doing a piece on how major paintings in the world have changed the course of history.
- Highlighting the major achievements of all the women can be another way which you can convey through your preferred medium of art.
2. Science And Technology
If you shy away from art, science can be your medium of expression and be the ideal hobby project idea for you.
- As a student, you can startwith a mobile app development initiative. It can be that your ongoing curriculum might not allow you the time to pursue app development like a professional, but having a head start is all that matters. Once such app idea could be based achieving a middle ground with technology in education. Right now, with the exposure of AI to education, we are losing touch with the organic learning process. However, we are progressing in other advanced forms. Hence, you can work on an app that will help with this concept.
- Another important aspect that you can work on is education access. Not every student in the world has the same learning infrastructure and privileges, and an easy access app can help us with this. You can think of a prototype that will work without an internet and justify the purpose further.
3. Debate
Maybe you’re someone who is more confident with their eloquence and speech. So, being a part of any debate team, be it in your school or locally, will not only open a new horizon of thinking for you, but also establish your cause.
- You can even organize debates locally or for school functions (with the required permissions) to carry forward the cause. Moreover, it will not only give you an idea for your project but expose you to various viewpoints.
4. Organizing a Fund-raiser (approved by teachers):
Every ideal society thrives on philanthropic ventures. Organizing a fund-raiser is a great passion project idea for many reasons. The most important reason is that you will be able to help a lot of fellow students and keep in touch with your empathetic side, along with maintaining your streak in the project. Some fund-raising ideas can be based on the following, as per your situation.
- Collecting funds for students who can’t afford the basic amenities in school like their lunch, new books, uniforms etc.
- Ensuring to educate at least one deprived child per class who can’t afford a school.
5. Entrepreneurial Ventures
If you wish to be a corporate professional or want to run your business in the future, this project can be an amazing portfolio addition to support your cause. It will not only highlight your dedication towards your dream but also your efficiency in achieving it. Some entrepreneurial ideas for your passion project are:
- You can help your fellow students by making the syllabus easier with your comprehensive notes, and in turn, invite their criticism on it too. Hence, your business venture will be a two-way learning process.
- Volunteer when there is a need for assisting a differently abled writer during any exam. This will not only be a project idea, but a social cause. It is also an insight into how you, as an entrepreneur and student, can make learning easier for everyone.
5 Passion Project Ideas for College Students
A passion project idea for a college student can be a challenge, owing to the curriculum pressure or the various responsibilities that might crop up in your adult life. However, having an ongoing hobby is going to establish your candidature for better opportunities. Moreover, the best part about it is you don’t have to reach any particular goal it with this one apart from just pursuing it. Let us see some quick passion project ideas for college students.
1. Art and Culture
If you are a student in the creative field, this is going to be another assignment for you, but eventually It’s going to work in your favor.
- Putting your skill of art and craft to use, you can make paintings on social situations, the books you have read, or on any cause that you believe in.
- You can also shoot or direct your game show or movie. If you are a social cause advocate, you can make short films that call for a change. This doesn’t need any specific degree, all it needs is an idea. The idea is that you can pick up any creative media to convey your message forward.
2. Science And Technology
Being a nerd is the best thing that can happen to you if you can use your skills in the desired way. A passion project doesn’t require you to have specific degrees to jump into your cause. You can be a film student trying to make an app or vice versa. Keeping this in mind, let us see some ideas revolving around the scientific temperament.
- If you are someone who loves technology, you can write code or develop an idea for an application that might ease the owes of your fellow students or society in general. The prototype needs to be designed keeping a particular issue in mind. For example, a piece of technology that will ensure women are safe in cabs by connecting the cab’s webcam footage and location to a monitored server.
- You can develop apps to track the menstrual health of women, specially minors in the less developed area, to help them navigate through it with proper aids which are backed by research.
3. Podcasts/ Videos
The concept of public speaking has changed a lot. It doesn’t necessarily imply that you have to go to a debate competition to communicate your ideas.
- You can start a podcast or a YouTube channel, which will help you express your views and, in turn, showcase you as a person.
- Another interesting concept would be to run a podcast that can help people take up causes and fight stigmas that hinder our growth as a society.
4. NGO
Since you will be applying for jobs sooner rather than later, you have to ensure, apart from keeping this up as a hobby, to stand out from the rest of the applications. So you can think of an idea that not only benefits your candidature but can be pursued as a philanthropic hobby too.
- An initiative that will bind the community, like contributing to an NGO or educating about the harmful effects of drugs on the less privileged can always be a good start.
- You can even design your own women’s campaigns like “making the workplace safer for women” or “educating women and its necessity” and be vocal about the cause.
5. Business Ventures
Most of the big businesses have taken wings in the college phase of an entrepreneur’s life. Additionally, having a well-developed idea for a project will help you strategically plan and advance your career in the long run. Let us quickly see a few ideas that you can use in your favor.
- You can start a brand that focuses on eco-friendly stationary and clothing, catering to the necessities of a college student.
- Help your fellow students by creating an online platform to exchange opinions on the current syllabus with the rest of the world and help the community grow.
- Another venture that might work in your favor is trying to onboard career coaches to impart ideas to you and your college mates.
Conclusion
I hope you had fun reading about our ideas that we have for a passion project. It’s not only an interesting way to put forward yourself in front of society but also for your future or present employer. Moreover, it’s a great initiative to keep you inspired when you are overwhelmed with studies or work.
Another motive behind this concept is to ensure we are not limiting ourselves to one particular idea. A bodybuilder who runs might seem plausible, but a bodybuilder who writes feels like an abomination. Hence, the concept is to disregard any such negative stereotypical labels and have fun on the way.
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why are passion projects good?
Passion projects are a live portfolio of who you are as a person. It helps you nurture your creativity and at the same time add value and personal growth. It can also be one of the landmark steps for your character development.
2. How can I create passion?
Passion is something that you are born with. You don’t create a passion, but you identify it. The right amount of curiosity, dedication, and finding a cause that you relate with the most will ensure you are aligned with your passionate side.
3. How to start FYP?
The most critical thing for a final year project is to identify a topic that you wish to work on. Once you have finalized the same, you can research on the outline of your project. With a little help and guidance from your mentor and an organized work routine, you can kick-start your project without trouble.
4. Is the final year project tough?
Working on a final-year project might sound overwhelming, but it is not exactly so, if executed with proper planning. No matter how difficult your topic is, if you have proper time management and you have figured out your plan to approach the project, half the work is done. The next thing you need to do is to ensure you have the proper resources to begin your work and you will be good to go.
