I’ll do a quick rundown of the basics first to build a good basis then give tips for that specific situation at the end. Keep in mind at this point in your career your resume should be one page and will be looked at for a minute at most. Once you’ve written the resume, you can upload it to https://resumeworded.com/ for some free detailed feedback.

I made a copy of my own resume w/out the personal info you can see here, along with checking online examples (I recommend looking at resume writing websites provided by colleges, especially ones for freshmen)

what to include in your resume:

• name and contact info (email, linkedin, phone number)
• education
• experience (can be broken up in 2/3 sections based on themes in your personal experiences, for ex: work, clubs/student orgs, leadership, and service/community involvement)
• optional: skills

resume basics:

• keep the formatting consistent and easy to skim (i.e. put job titles, dates, etc in the same placement each section). that means dates are all formatted the same, spacing in between lines is the same, same font and font size, same parts of each section italicized, etc.
• quantify your achievements and results whenever possible. for ex: specifying how many drinks you made per hour as a barista, how often you did a certain job or task (weekly, daily, etc.), a percent increase in profit or productivity after you did something, etc.
• use strong action verbs. and don’t repeat verbs, use a different one for each bullet point.
• put experiences in reverse chronological order in each section
• use sentence long bullet points, not paragraphs. format should be action verb + what + how/why/impact.
• don’t waste time and space including articles (a, the, etc.). be blunt and to the point.

In the case of your cousin, keep in mind that you want to include relevant experience rather than just load it up with a million different jobs or clubs. definitely mention relevant coursework and embellish the hell out of personal hobbies and skills. I even mentioned this blog on one of my resumes lol (“build following of over # on blog geared towards increasing literacy and rhetorical analysis blah blah blah”).

You can take the smallest, most inconsequential experiences and make them sound relevant if you spin it right. If you mowed your neighbor’s lawn, you had a neighborhood lawn service. If you watched your cousins, you have caretaker experience. etc. Don’t try to come up with a bunch of random stuff just to take up space, but find a way to take what experience they do have and spin it in a way where you can highlight the relevance to whatever they’re making the resume for.

tl;dr be concise. be consistent. be specific. highlight your strengths.