By the start of Spring semester, college students enter the chaotic summer internship application frenzy. Career planning is daunting and a common stressor on students — we all know what it feels like to agonize over our resumes, GPAs and extracurriculars.
This is nothing new. Both the job market and college institutions are growing more and more competitive, and it takes so much more effort than it ever before to stand out.
Just as the students before us restlessly scrambled to secure an internship that would look attractive to employers down the line, we too will do the same, and so will all the students in the years to follow.
This built-in requirement in the U.S. college and job culture is only part of the ceaseless cycle of steps one must take to be deemed “successful.”
However, this year feels slightly different.
The spread of COVID-19 obviously altered all aspects of life, and the internship application process is no exception.
With stay-at-home orders and the obvious limitations around everyday activities, the pandemic quite literally forced each of us to slow down and take many steps back. Plans were thrown away, and we said goodbye to many of the opportunities we had envisioned ourselves pursuing.
The restless battle for success that eats away at any overachiever’s mind was forcibly suppressed, and we all had to put the brakes on our underlying thirst for success — to some extent.
Because it was universally acknowledged that many of our ambitions had to be put on pause, we were finally given permission and space to realign our self-imposed standards, drop our ridiculously high expectations for ourselves, delve into passions we had previously dismissed and maybe — just maybe — take a breath.
Society existed in a state of uncertainty, making it socially acceptable to not have everything figured out or put together, as we so often are expected to.
Still, many students have fought and struggled to continue to meet these standards, grappling with the inability to perform as well as they would have normally. Eighty-two percent of surveyed students reported increased levels of stress and anxiety over concern for their academic performances during the pandemic, according to a study by the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
The study revealed that students worried about falling behind in their academic projects and research reported difficulty concentrating, reduced levels of motivation and concerns about technical issues with online applications.
Now that we are slowly drifting out of that phase and entering a new era of fresh starts, this push to reclaim our roles as thriving, high-functioning individuals has never felt more powerful.
The past year is often thought of as time “lost,” a year that deprived us of not only engaging with the world in the ways we love, but also in ways we once felt obliged to do. Since many of us simply didn’t have the means to advance our careers and carry on with our academic paths, we are now trying to make it all happen at once.
Coupled with the stronger incentive to get ahead, many internships are operating fully remotely. This extends the range of competition from only those who live in the area to virtually any applicant who fits well with the job description.
Sound stressful? It is.
To make matters worse, we aren’t even gaining the full experience that internships are meant to provide, because we will be learning and working through the screens of our computers and phones.
It is already difficult enough to be chosen to intern at a company you admire, but with internships being online, the unanimous pressure to launch our careers and a heightened spike of competition, the stress over our future is reaching a boiling point.
As we set foot in a new, hopeful stage of life, we should hold close some of the valuable lessons we found by spending time alone with ourselves, detached from the urge to excel. Our worth is not measured by our resumes.
There is more to life than the steps we take to advance our careers, and each of our identities stretch far beyond simply being students.
