Hunting for internships sucks.
College students look forward and dread the search. I have been looking off and on again for the past year. Owning accounts on Linkedin, internships.com (through Chegg), Indeed.com, and Hire a Knight, I try to keep my options open.
Currently, I have a pretty lax proofreading internship with Shadoe Publishing, which I began at the beginning of February this year. They email me short stories and books to proofread and tweak some. Even with my busy schedule, it easily fits into my tasks, and I don’t mind fitting in time to look over these emails. I enjoy it so far.
I am still attempting to obtain more experience, however. As all the leadership conferences and career meetings I have gone to say, experience is everything. Don’t miss out on new opportunities and the chance to grow in your profession. Also, more possibilities of networking is a plus.
Well, it’s not that easy. Despite all of the job sites I have accounts for, despite all the internships I apply for, I am hearing very little back. Not only is this disheartening but worrisome.
Today I had a meeting with career services to ease my worries. I recently was turned down for another internship. Usually, I am a happy-go-lucky person and try to take hits and turn them into a positive. Even with this recent disappointment, I told myself that there will be more doors and opportunities. Just because this time ended with a snag does not mean the next time will too.
Yet, I soon sent an email to career services for some advice. If I was doing something wrong, I wanted to find out and fix it ASAP. Again, I will be graduating in December. I want to ensure that I am as prepared for post-grad life as possible.
Waking up sooner than my normal day (i.e. 8 a.m.), I printed my resume and meandered my way over to career services. I met up with the awesome “career geek” who also goes by the name of Sheila and had a nice chat. She pointed out a few areas on my resume that I could tweak, but reassured me that it otherwise looked great.
In my head, I went “shoot.”
Admittedly, when she told me my resume looked well in order, I looked down with sagging shoulders. I was really hoping that the reason I was having a tough time with internship searching was because I had a shoddy resume–an easy fix. I wasn’t sure what more to do.
So I sighed and asked her what more I should be doing. What was I missing?
The most useful tid bit she gave me was to not be discouraged.
Sheila reminded me to hold my head up and be the “Wonder Woman” I am. She reassured me that this was all part of the process. Career services wishes that they could just peek at a student’s resume and point at exactly where to apply and hand them a job, but that’s not how the world works. The main thing is to keep plugging away at internships. Eventually the right one will come along.
Now I just have to be patient and keep tapping away at applications.
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” ~A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
