It’s January 2023, internship season is in full swing, everyone here and there is getting one, and I’m suffering a slight slowdown.
I almost daily submit applications, yet every single one of them rejects or ghosts me. Worst of all, I have no idea why I am being rejected. There are several places where I felt confident I would hear back, but even none of them appear to be working.
Normally, I am a really optimistic and rational person (if you don’t believe me, check out my website, you’ll see lol). But At times like these, I’m also starting to believe in luck, and there are plenty of reasons to do that as well.
For example, there’s this organization called XYZ (I won’t name it because I’m still hopeful that they’ll respond) that works in some technology in which I’m very comfortable and have multiple projects in it (good ones), and I also meet every criterion like being a decent competitive programmer, but I haven’t heard from them but my friends who are somewhat new to the required tech stack and filled out the application solely on my advice received responses, but I did not.
I believe that not getting an internship is not necessarily a bad thing, but not knowing why you are being ghosted is. Being ghosted by anyone, in general, is a major blow to one’s self-esteem and, in my opinion, is incredibly counter-productive.
Some of my friends advise me to apply to any company and complete one internship simply for the sake of doing it. But, hell no, I don’t know how beneficial doing an internship for someone’s career is, but I can’t mentally prepare myself to do an internship just for the purpose of doing it. I don’t hate the idea of working at a start-up (in fact, I love it), but I definitely hate the idea of working at a start-up that isn’t doing anything interesting, or, more broadly, I don’t want to work at an organization that isn’t impacting the world and helping people in some way or another to make their lives easier.
I believe that doing an internship for the sake of doing it will be a betrayal of all the hard work I have put in since my freshman year (and even before that). Ayush, in his first year, will even hate the thought of thinking anything remotely similar. I want to intern so that I may learn how these great companies work at their core, learn from them, and cooperate with them.
Freshman Ayush was doing really goood — he had huge aspirations and was taking the necessary steps to achieve them. But now I feel trapped in this education system that feels antiquated and very unpractical (on top of that, I’m in a tier 3 college, but that’s a story for another time).
I know some would say that I’m still 21, but I’m feeling really unfulfilled. I read about these awesome people like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Vitalik Buterin, and many more who are my heroes, but they all did pretty cool things when they were my age and were changing the world. And here I am, struggling just to exist.
One of the few things that has been rewarding is competitive programming, I really enjoy giving contests on codeforces, I think it’s one of the few things I’m decent at, and I’m going to keep doing it as long as I can. It makes me feel valuable when practically everything else isn’t working out.
I’ve always wanted to start my own company (and perhaps change the world for the better), and I think this could be a great time to do so. (One could say Elon also started up because he couldn’t get a job lol)
(can you imagine rejecting Elon, bruh he is literally the best of us, tho I’m not sure if he would make a good employee or not)
But, in any case, I’ll keep up the good work, and maybe, the next blog will contain something interesting!
Be epic,
Ayush
creativegiant.xyz (It may not be up when you see it, but I’m working on a permanent hosting solution).