Underqualified and overwhelmed: a message to the stressed-out student

I have always thought that the spring semester feels much harder than the fall. My friends and I have come up with a lot of theories — we like to overload in the spring, we’re preparing to move out, we plan spring break vacations and we finalize summer plans. While the fall feels like living a new beginning, the spring is a time for planning for the future. The highlight of this planning, of course, is the summer internship (or job or class or study abroad or grad school prep or all of the above). 

The summer experience question, of course, is difficult in more ways than one. For lots of students, a summer internship has the potential to ultimately become a job offer; this obviously puts a lot of pressure on finding that perfect opportunity with the ideal location, best prospects, good office culture, etc. For others, a summer position is an experience to help narrow down our career paths in the future or to work on an issue we’re passionate about; there can be stress to find funding, get another job on the side and discern whether we like and want to pursue what we’re doing.

I have, unfortunately, been living and breathing the internship search for the last several weeks. I’m completing an internship this semester, hoping to find one for over the summer and will be doing another one in the fall. Although I have loved all of my experiences, something about the impermanence of internships just doesn’t sit right with me; I feel like no matter how many experiences I have, my resume never feels full enough.

I, like many students I know, feel chronically underqualified. While I know rationally that my grades are good, I have lots of transferable and useful skills and I have almost infinite career resources at my disposal, I still feel a pit in my stomach with every application I submit. 

I guess that part of the college student culture, and maybe even the Notre Dame culture, is that sense of “imposter syndrome;” it’s probably partially what drives us to constantly do better and makes us so successful. But sometimes, I feel that when I’m at my third LSAT prep event when everyone around me has been to 10 or when I’m at the dining hall when my friends are at their seventh club meeting of the week, that maybe it’s too much. Is the pressure we put on ourselves reasonable? Do we really need a new internship every semester, every summer, until we begin our permanent careers? 

Maybe we do. The job market is getting worse and worse every year, after all, and the cost of tuition isn’t getting any lower. I wrote an article a few months ago, when I was still pretty new to Notre Dame, about our culture of “doing too much.” I was preoccupied last fall with studying while attending football games and maintaining a social life while finding time to rest. Now, I view our “doing too much” culture in a slightly different way. As the year has progressed, I’ve begun to yearn for the days that I spent an entire Saturday thinking about football. Now, I spend them writing cover letters, corporate wardrobe shopping and anxiously spiraling about the future.

In the world we live in, career stress is unavoidable. I can’t tell you to give yourself a break from the stress and remember to relax; this stuff is important and honestly could be life-changing. My solace is this: once upon a time, we were high schoolers stressing about college. College decisions felt life-altering, too, and they were; none of us would be the same person or have the same opportunities if we hadn’t gotten into Notre Dame. But we didn’t all get here at the same time, in the same way. The first time I applied to Notre Dame, I was waitlisted. I spent a year at another college and a year at home waiting tables before I found myself here. My path to college hasn’t been linear, and my career likely won’t be either. 

Two years ago, I would have laughed if you told me I would one day attend Notre Dame. So, as a reminder to myself and to anyone else restlessly dwelling on their future right now, I will say this: don’t be discouraged. We will all get where we’re meant to be.