It isn’t quite the halfway point in the semester, but it seems like the buzz in the air is already preoccupied with its imminent end and the start of the summer plans frenzy. Everyone knows this hype—snippets of conversations on the way to class about internships, cities, apartment hunting. There are the people glowing with pride when asked the classic question about what they have lined up for the summer, just as there those who pale visibly when interrogated because they have absolutely no idea. The root of the internship heat really seems to be about the crystallization of our futures, which is both an equally exciting and frightening reality. It’s natural to experience anxiety regarding a career path, but I think the panic associated with not having a traditional summer internship that “everyone” gets is misplaced. No one, it seems, is frightened about what happens next, after said coveted internship is secured. For every person who can’t sleep at night because they haven’t yet decided what to do with their summer, isn’t there anyone with a resume-perfect job locked in the least bit scared that they are unknowingly entering a track that they aren’t meant to be on in the first place?
At the beginning of the semester, I was fully aware that I had an internship lined up for the following summer, which might suggest a certain degree of confidence, certainty even, about my future. After all, why should I be worried? I saw my peers biting their fingernails after multiple rounds of interviews, anxiously awaiting the results and wondering when they could join their friends at the Big Four or the major banks and consulting firms and stop having to think about what to do next. It wasn’t until my management professor asked a very simple, seemingly obvious question that I realized not thinking, really thinking, about the future is an even graver mistake than not getting a cookie cutter job. In the throes of midterms and the beginning of interview season, our class was sleep-deprived, minds fried and eyes barely open, when our teacher posed a curve ball for us to ponder: What is our dream job?
Everyone looked at each other quizzically, paralyzed.It was a simple question, the kind that kindergartners get to answer easily and excitedly all the time, but one that we hadn’t actually been asked for years. Someone half-heartedly answered that they wanted to be a Bain consultant; another responded their dream was to be a lawyer.
“If you could be anything in the world,” my teacher continued, “You would really choose to be a lawyer?”
Silence in the classroom. It wasn’t that there was anything inherently wrong with wanting to be those things—accountants, lawyers, consultants—but that, for most of the classroom, they were not, decidedly, a dream career path. It was a wake up call for me; I had stared at my blank notebook page for awhile before finally jotting down the career corresponding to my internship, because that made sense, it was reasonable. But practicality is a far cry from passion, and my professor knew it. In the scramble to find a summer internship—all in the name of gaining experience to ultimately find a job down the road—we forget to ask ourselves to think long and hard about what our dreams are—or at least, what they used to be before our lifestyle didn’t permit the time to imagine anymore.
It’s true that an internship doesn’t pin you down to anything. You can use a summer job to test the waters of a profession and emerge with a better understanding of what you want to be doing. There’s always the freedom to switch jobs, to change paths. But when real pressure hits—from peers, from wanting to be marketable, from the temptation to stick with what is safe—the reality is that people aren’t always willing to trade security for passion. For the first time since I’d signed my contract, I humored my professor and thought about my dream job. While I was undoubtedly excited for my internship, I knew, deep down, that there was a real possibility it might not be my ultimate career destination. My third-grade self had a ready answer for what her dream job was without hesitating a beat, and as I sat there mulling over the question again as a junior in college, I realized that a part of me still harbored her same hope.It was nothing groundbreaking, but being induced to acknowledge that I still carry a dream for my future was refreshing. My professor was on to something: if we all asked ourselves that question regularly—not once in a blue moon—maybe we’d have the extra drive we needed to build the life we always imagined living.
