Ah, internships and post-grad jobs. You’re not actually required to get either, but society makes you feel like you’re obligated to. To be considered successful these days, college students are expected to secure jobs with impressive companies, and to do that, most businesses require applicants to have relevant internship experience. Of course, freshman and sophomores usually don’t have to worry about this process yet. But when the reality of it hits you during your junior and senior year, most collegiettes feel like this:
Congrats, upperclassmen, you’re now at the stage where you’ve got to master adulting and apply in the hopes of securing a job that’ll help you pay off that college degree.
The struggles of this task start with you internally panicking at the fact that you know nothing about how to become professionally employed.
Then your brain saves you by remembering that UMass has a career services center.
You race to the center and go on their website and are relieved to find that they have tutorials on how to make resumes and cover letters.
Then you realize that you have to write resumes and cover letters for every position you apply for.
You then start your search on CareerConnect for job openings, but can’t find any that you’re qualified for.
After hours of searching, you finally find a position at a company that matches your strengths and you’re like: You start to write your resume for the job, but get frustrated when the format of it goes wonky on your laptop.
And then you’re stuck trying to figure out how to make your skills sound impressive.
You feel accomplished when you finish drafting your resume, but you soon realize that you have to revise it because you’ve used the same verb 20 times to describe your accomplishments.
You then start the grueling process of writing the cover letter.
Once you’ve finished it, you carefully check to make sure that you’ve covered all your points and that you haven’t accidentally misspelled the recruiter’s name.
You then go through the process of making an appointment with a career advisor to review your masterpieces only to find that everyone’s had the same idea and the next open appointment is in three weeks.
You then pull out all the stops to get your work looked at by an official advisor so you can submit your best version of your resume and cover letter by the application deadline.
You try to upload your work to the online application and notice that your resume’s format shifted and is now a chopped up mess that makes you look unprofessional. Naturally your reaction is:
You then spend another hour and a half trying to think of every tactic you know to fix this problem.
You then submit your application and feel accomplished as a adult.
And when you hear back two weeks later that the recruiters want to have an interview with you, you’re beyond psyched.
Then you realize you have to hold your own with recruiters and that thought alone sends you into a tailspin.
You try to write out your elevator pitch and your answers to behavioral questions, but you hate every answer you’ve written.
You then take a deep breath and decide it’s best to be yourself.
You try to remember that mentality as you start to internally freak out the day of the interview.
You go in and present to the recruiters the best version of yourself, and you honestly can’t remember what you were so stressed about.
You tell yourself that regardless of what happens, you’re proud that you learned to adult, and you had the courage to apply for a job and put yourself out there. Now it’s time to thank the interviewer via email and then reward yourself with a relaxing day — you’ve earned it, collegiettes!
Image/GIFs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24