Summertime is upon me once again and rather than interning for a journalism publication or acquiring a job to help pay off student loans, I'll be traveling to Cuba.
I've been so excited to go since I was accepted into the study abroad program because it'll be my first time exploring outside of the U.S., but that feeling has dwindled as the date gets closer.
While I'm going abroad for a month, other friends of mine are either working jobs or interning at places to gain experience in their prospective fields. I feel like this is something I should also be doing, seeing as I'll be a junior starting in August, but have no time to do this summer.
I really did think I had all the time in the world to get an internship because four years in college seemed like forever, but I'm already halfway done and I still don't have close to no real-world experience. Not to mention, I'm not quite sure about the details of finding an internship.
It's too easy to feel like I'm not up to my college's standards because I haven't been involved in many UT Austin publications, I have no personal connections with my professors and, like I said before, I haven't had a single internship to put on my resume.
Now, I know by the time I graduate I will at least have one, if not a few, but right now there are friends of mine who have had as many as three internships and are graduating with me in the year 2020!
When I compare myself to these friends it really takes the fun out of studying abroad which is why I shouldn't be comparing myself to them in the first place. Honestly, what good has ever come out of comparing myself to someone else? Nada!
There's a quote by Angela Davis that says, "I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change, I am changing the things I can no longer accept." She, along with her quote, is one of my favorites, and while she's most likely talking about the grander schemes of life, I feel like it fits perfectly with where I'm at right now.
I'm uncomfortable with the amount of progress I have made since I've been at UT because, frankly, it's not enough for me, so I will move — and for anyone else who feels the same way I do, you should move too.
So rather than going to Cuba solely for studying abroad and the lessons that have been planned, I want to venture out on my free time to write so I can add it to my portfolio. This way, when fall comes around I have the exact material I want to submit to internships.
