It’s 2 a.m. on Tuesday morning and I’m at Target Copy printing my resume on paper that looks like a linen dress my grandma would wear.
“Are you sure this is what you want it to look like?” says the guy who has the unfortunate job of working at Target Copy in the middle of the night. I stare at him as I quietly say “yes” and tell him that I just worked on that stupid piece of paper for the past two hours.
“Oh yeah I was just making sure. It looks really good!”
Your fake compliment won’t help you this time my friend.
I was printing my resume for Career Showcase, a beautiful event in which you have to explain your interests, hopes, dreams, accomplishments and Excel skills in a 30 second speech to 20 different people.
To say I was nervous was an understatement. I’m normally pretty comfortable talking to strangers, but the reality of finding a job in the next eight months overpowered that self-confidence.
I could feel the sweat drip down my back (I have a really high body temperature, okay??) as I walked into the O’Dome. Small particles of salty water formed above my lip, or as I like to call it “my mustache of sweat,” and I decided to take a lap around to make myself less jittery.
I realized as I walked around that Career Showcase is like a high school cafeteria. There are obviously cool companies that might as well be saying “you can’t sit with us,” then the less cool companies that no one wants to sit with and then your average looking company that is probably really funny, but you wouldn’t know because you’ve never talked to them. I like this category because I have personally fallen into it as a human for the past 21 years. I decided to keep to my own people and approach the latter kind of company as a test run.
Via: Movie Clips
It was awful. You know when you muster up the courage to talk to your crush and then words start coming out of your mouth and you’re like “NO, get back in there”? It was exactly like that.
“Hi I’m Claire Fuller. Here’s my resume. I like public relations. I am the most boring person on this earth and you definitely shouldn’t hire me.” Or at least that’s what I heard. The woman on the other side of my monologue was nice enough to give me a pamphlet and say, “Maybe you’ll find some opportunities online that interest you. Have a good day!” I think I broke the record for the shortest conversation ever.
As the day progressed I thankfully got a lot better at making myself seem more accomplished and more employable than I am. While I walked out of the O’Dome with business cards and info session handouts in tow, I came to realize that my success at Career Showcase has almost nothing to do with my ability to find a job.
Actually, a lot of my success in college has nothing to do with my ability to find a job. Sure, it’s important to be involved, have an internship and make good grades, but the way I presented these accomplishments was what made companies interested in me.
We put so much pressure on ourselves to have a full-time job with great benefits and cool people to go to happy hour with, all by the day we graduate. God forbid we have a couple weeks to decompress from the past four years of sitting through three-hour blocks, running to club meetings, sheepishly attending professors’ office hours, bar hopping at midtown and being a human.
Most of us have only been on this earth for about 20 years and, God willing, we have the next 40 or so to be working in the real world. Senior friends, take time over these next few months to really invest in yourself and your interests. There’s no other time in our lives that we’ll have the time.
In the words of the great Louis C.K, “You’ll be fine. You’re 25. Feeling unsure and lost is part of your path. Don’t avoid it. See what those feelings are showing you and use it. Take a breath. You’ll be okay. Even if you don’t feel okay all the time.”
Embrace your mustache of sweat and go into the last few months of college life with passion, ferocity, hydration and patience.
