Wouldn’t it be great if I could have titled this something clickable and motivational like “9 Tips for Landing the Internship of Your Dreams”? Yeah, yeah it would. Unfortunately for me, that entails landing aforementioned internship. Instead, I’m stuck in this early-February torment, scrolling endlessly through databases and networks. With with every link I click on, I find myself in equal measure suffocated by everything there is to apply for and terrified that there will be nothing for me.
One of the reasons the internship search has made me so miserable is that I can turn any choice into a crisis. Want to get coffee with me? Sound pleasant and fun? Enjoy having me whine in your ear about the size/flavor/degree of caffeine I want (or maybe I don’t want? Stay tuned, I’ll take you through the entire thought process.) while we stand in line and then ask for a sip of your drink because I made the wrong choice. Oddly, I find the the daily and weekly challenges of juggling schoolwork, work and extracurriculars far easier to manage. I know what’s expected of me, and I trust myself. This kind of decision is different, though. Take latte indecision angst, multiply it by 1000 and raise it to the power of trying to get a job. I haven’t felt this uncertain since I was a senior in high school applying for colleges.
It’s a "Bell Jar" fig tree decision: “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked...I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest.” While I do realize that how I spend the summer of 2016 will not define the rest of my life, it’s hard to keep that in perspective right now.
Every application is saddled with endless questions: Should I pursue the media or book publishing? TV or a magazine? Will this look good on a resume? And the ever-present: why are all arts and media internships unpaid? Then there’s the slippery nature of deadlines: I was excited to find something promising right in Chicago (with a stipend no less), but even though the network listed the deadline as the end of February, when I clicked on the application, it had already been removed. Reality, as it turns out, doesn’t have the universal, concrete deadlines of the Common App.
I’m trying to stay reasonable about this, by going to workshops and appointments at my campus Career Center, narrowing down those endless database results and of course submitting the applications themselves. After all, this summer (the summer after my sophomore year) should be about gaining experience and laying the groundwork for next summer. Still, the pressure can be overwhelming.
That fear is difficult to write about because if a potential employer were to stumble upon this, I want them to think “what a levelheaded and capable candidate,” and not “she definitely cried over vegetarian chik’n nuggets about this.” The truth is, I’m scared, I’m really scared. But stay tuned, folks. “9 Tips for Landing the Internship of Your Dreams” feat. inspirational GIFs will be coming to your Facebook feed someday soon.
