Get Up or Give Up

Life can be exhausting, especially as the fall semester comes to a close and seasonal depression begins to set in. There’s something soul-crushing about walking into class in broad daylight, struggling with grueling assignments and irritable classmates, and emerging to utter blackness. The long nights and endless energy drinks are finally beginning to take their toll.

As I sit writing this, my heart is hammering and it is difficult to breathe. There are three weeks left for me to secure an internship before my graduation date gets pushed even further back, and the application I spent the most time on and had the best chance of getting an interview with has a typo in the cover letter. I had been grappling with a submission field issue and, out of sheer frustration, neglected to triple check my work. 

I had always been known as the scrappy one, the one who managed to pull something out of her pocket at the last second. But when I saw that error, something inside of me broke. That was it. I had used up my nine lives, and it was time to finally reap the consequences. 

Or was it?

I opened Google, preparing for a long, desperate search for more internships, and was met with the perfect opportunity. It was remote, paid, and fit perfectly with my interests and skills. And it had been posted the previous day, shortly after my devastating mistake. Arguably, the company was a better fit than the one I had hinged all my hopes on. Had the previous application process gone smoothly, I wouldn’t have even bothered to look again and missed a massive opportunity as a result. 

Granted, I haven’t secured the internship yet. I stayed up until four in the morning finalizing my materials and triple-checked before submitting it at a more appropriate time in the day. The anxiety surrounding possible rejection is still there, but I find comfort in the fact that I didn’t just throw in the towel and accept my fate. I was given the choice of getting up or giving up, and giving up was not an option. All we can really do is try our best and hope that the rest works out. Maybe it’ll pay off, maybe it won’t. But if we don’t get up, if we don’t even try, then we’ll never know.