#midterms SUCK! internship applications SUCK!! career fairs SUCK!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thisnerdsadventures · 7 years

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wow it’s been a hell of a couple of weeks. it has quite literally been hell

career week was last week, and i actually had a draft written up for this blog that was 100% sad and self-deprecating because I had gotten rejected from yet another club and I was convinced I wasn’t going to get an internship because I thought there was something inherently wrong with me, and while this was probably an overreaction, I think some of those feelings and thoughts were warranted and reflect on the overall toxicity surrounding us here.

But the good news first: through all that suffering, I somehow got calls from two companies so far? like actual big companies? I’m very confused, someone let me know why they want to talk to me, a human potato. I am now frantically trying to prep for my first interview on Friday because I didn’t prepare before because I honestly didn’t think I was going to get a call back. But I guess because I have “sophomore” instead of “freshman”, and “6-3″ instead of “2″, companies are now suddenly #interested. (To my frustration though, some companies still refuse to hire me because i’m not a rising senior - I thought we had passed this point once I became “not a freshman” but this is fine. One company actually looked at my resume, circled nothing except “2020″ and I knew they were only talking to me out of consideration, which is more than I can say for some.)

But it’s still kind of frustrating though. The whole process, really, from showing up to info sessions to talking to recruiters, to filling out applications, it’s almost like an extra 12 unit class you signed up for, and honestly it might be enough to push you over the edge if you aren’t careful. I think I must’ve built up a list of like 30 different companies I was interested in or had internship programs, and researched all 30 of them, trying to see which role I was most qualified for/fit in to. And I must’ve seemed like quite a dick honestly, being the kind of person I thought I wasn’t going to be, but got sucked up in the game, just like I got sucked up in Course 6. At 3am on Thursday I had a crisis, wondering if this was the kind of person I was, and if I was going to stay this way, and what it meant for my own ethics/morals. I honestly went to career fair on 4 hours of sleep with 0 fucks to give because it had already negatively impacted me and people around me enough. I mean, I looked at all the people I didn’t pay any attention to last week because I was too busy with career stuff, and I had an absolute meltdown wondering how I was going to balance everything if I didn’t put 100% of my effort into chasing these opportunities that, given my relative lack of experience to literally everyone else in the major, I wouldn’t even be considered. And honestly, the thought of that frightened me, because if I put in 100% of everything I had into something, then even if it turned out the way I didn’t want it to, then that wouldn’t bother me, but if I didn’t put all of my attention, my effort, my energy into that, then there would always be a nagging feeling of “I didn’t try hard enough.”

At some point I think to myself: “If I truly was trying hard, at every aspect of my life, wouldn’t I be able to balance this? I’d have to sacrifice something, though, probably my physical health or mental health to balance every part of my life, but it would be better than sacrificing one of the parts of my life, wouldn’t it?” Honestly, I wonder if it would be worth it, considering that if I’m not balancing everything just right, then my world feels like its on the brink of collapse.

Idk I also had general problems outside the classroom which also affected my mental health, but I kind of just had to push through general exhaustion and sadness to put in said effort. I want to say that those are all resolved, but I think it might be a recurring problem, and I’m not sure how I’m going to balance all these things, while maintaining my identity and personal relationships, in the midst of quite teetering mental health at times.

It’s just October. I haven’t taken a midterm yet. Most of my psets have gone relatively smoothly. But personally, I’m not really sure where I am with people or who I’m becoming. I think I’ve gotten stuck in “must do work to avoid personal problems and feeling that I’m not doing enough” mode. Again, last week was really rough, I don’t think anyone is having a good time right now (one of the posts in our class group was “is anyone ok” and the consensus is “no”) so I’m still trying to come back from it, and I’m feeling slightly better overall, but still kinda sad. will update

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