I thought building my resume and applying for college was hard. Starting sophomore and junior year by analyzing each of my extracurricular activities and making sure they would stand out on my college applications. Depth instead of breadth is what my high school told us all four years when talking about college. Choose a few activities to invest your time in and get heavily involved as opposed to jumping around to a bunch of different ones and never fully committing yourself.

I managed to run the college application gauntlet and am happy with where I ended up and what I am studying, but now I am faced with an entirely new long term gauntlet with several obstacle courses throughout. What is this new challenge one might ask?

The goal of finding employment for a post-graduate job.

The smaller obstacle courses I face between now and graduation?

Finding internships for the summer and throughout the year.

Admittedly, I may face a bit more peer pressure when it comes to finding an internship because of the campus culture my university has towards holding impressive internships throughout your four years. However, even with this pressure coming from those around me, I have a large personal motivation and drive to find internships.

This personal drive is fueled by a couple of things.

First, I want the experience. There is a whole swath of careers and opportunities out in the professional world that I want to explore and try out before I need a full-time job. So, I welcome the opportunity to get small tastes of the real world to know what I do like and what I will stay far away from.

The second reason I am motivated to put in countless hours to apply for multiple internships is because I feel like it is expected by those post-graduate employers. Like applying to college, recruiters and hiring managers will scratch their heads if they see a candidate’s resume with very minimal experience coming in to their first job after graduation. They will wonder what this individual has been doing with their time over the past four years and may even wonder if this could be telling of a candidate’s motivation and work ethic in the office, making them less likely to hire this individual.

So, because like every college student out there, I would love to walk at graduation knowing that I have my first day of my first full-time job awaiting my arrival, I will be refreshing LinkedIn every day for new internship postings, write numerous cover letters, make my resume eye-catching while still looking professional, and keep my fingers crossed so I can build my resume now with a variety of professional experiences that will help me in the near future.

However, unlike the college application process, you don’t just gather all these materials, hit submit on the application and then wait patiently for a response. Applying for internships is a juggling act. You apply to a handful, hoping to hear back and get interviews with maybe half of those. Then you schedule the first interview, await to see if there may be a second interview necessary, and tip toe on pins and needles with the hope that an offer comes.

But the hardest thing for me is juggling multiple opportunities at once. Last year in my frenzy of applying, I didn’t expect the complicated process of having an offer from one job but still interviewing for another position that was equally interesting. I didn’t want to make a final decision, yet at the same time I acknowledged the need to be respectful of other people’s time.

If only it was a playing filed like college where you have several weeks to consider all your options before making your final decision by May 1^st. Instead, you are playing a dangerous game of chance, afraid if you turn down one offer, another one won’t come your way, or if you accept one, a better offer will come later.

It is interesting to me that our society has gotten to such a point where there is so much emphasis and pressure to build up a resume early all for the reasoning of getting some entry level job by the time you graduate college. But what is even more interesting is that it is not just those who are seeking jobs who feel this pressure, but it is also employers who are feeling the crunch.

No longer are interns the ones fetching coffee and lunches and other administrative tasks. Companies boast to prospective internships by describing the networking and professional development opportunities and the potential to work as a team while taking ownership of individual projects. The experience of summer internships is becoming like going to summer camp with some positions offering housing and accommodations and most companies organizing social events and activities for their cohort of interns.

Now that burgeoning young professionals are feeling the pressure and demands to have internships, their demands and expectations of their internship experience are escalating. Making note of this, companies are racing to make their opportunities engaging and exciting with the hope that it will help them attract the top talent that will one day become future employees.

This pattern will be interesting to observe in years to come and it will be equally intriguing to consider the impact on the work/life balance now that more and more people are being exposed to corporate, professional environments earlier.

For now, though as I continue to apply for internships I have one thing left to say: Please, someone, hire me this summer.