My Summer Internship has Nothing to do with My Degree

Next week I will be starting an internship that I could not be more excited about, but honestly, I am not sure what I will be doing. I know it has nothing to with my degree. But I am so excited to work for an amazing company and try something new.

I am pursuing a degree in public relations (idk what I am going to do with it or if I enjoy PR, but that's a story for another day). For my degree, I must complete an internship related to my program before graduation. I don't have the prerequisite to get those internship credits yes, so I will still have to have job experience related to my major before I am done with school. Although, I figured applying for internships this summer would be beneficial to gain experience in order to get a job I loved next year when I can receive credit.

This was a lot easier said than done. I started applying for summer jobs in September. I applied for 52 positions, got no response from 16, was immediately rejected by 22 and made it through at least one round of the interview process for 13 positions with 12 different companies.

How did it all end? 7 months later I have completely different position that I did not apply for. I made it to the end stages of the interview process with a company and they offered me a spot somewhere else, and I was delighted to take it.

That is true. I was, and still am, very excited. But it was a horrible process. I am a straight A student. I have prior part-time internship experience in my field. I am involved on my campus. I think I'm normal enough. Overall, I feel like I have tried my hardest in college, and I am so proud in all I have done in the past few years. So, dealing with so many rejections were, and is, hard.

This article isn't meant to be a pity party. I'm sure tons of students have had summer job hunt experience just like this. I wanted this article to be a break in the never-ending social posts of people publicizing the acceptance of their dream job.

But here I am now in the end with a job in a location that is perfect me at a company that I think I am going to love (plus people can bring in their dogs to the office on Fridays). And I get to try something totally new unrelated to my major. I hope this will bring me one step closer to finding a career path.