As a recent graduate, I think I’m going to miss summer vacation the most. Three months of doing absolutely nothing but playing video games and eating cheez-its was absolute bliss. Turns out some people actually enjoy working during summer and getting this thing called money. Those jobs usually involve manual labor, but Google has a wonderful idea that will stimulate the mind instead of those pesky things we call muscles.

Google announced today on their official blog the “Summer of Code 2012.” This isn’t your ordinary summer job as it invites students from all over the world to contribute to a pre-selected list of open source projects that need extra help in writing code. It’s the perfect opportunity to make some money and gain some experience in the field.

Here’s how the job is going to go down: students will be paired up with a mentor from the project they’re assigned to. This will give them an opportunity to work with real-word software and make themselves more desirable to potential employers. It’s like the paid internship of your dreams, if you’re a computer science major.

There are 180 projects that students can currently choose from. The projects are a mix of large companies to small projects at universities. Some of the more well-known projects include Google’s own open source projects, Mozilla, GIMP and Python.

Interested students are invited to submit a proposal before April 6. This is just like a real job, however, so you’re not guaranteed a spot just because you submit a proposal. It’s going to be a highly competitive job market so you best make your proposal a good one. Also, you are allowed to submit multiple proposals, but quality is more important than quantity in this case.

For more rules and guidelines, check out the blog post. To further help prospective applicants, Google will be hosting a Google+ Hangout on the Google Students page on Monday, April 2. Be sure to check it out and make your summer more productive than mine ever were.