Engineering is disturbing me
So I’ve been dealing with all of these interviews for internships next summer. Basically my situation is this: I really don’t like being poor. I like having enough money for a monthly video game, or to take my boyfriend out to dinner. Also, I realize that taking a year off of school before diving back in to go to medical school sounds like a really good way to get me back into the real world before running back into fantasy intellectual world again.
Unfortunately, as a result of all of the trying to get jobs, I also have to deal with a great deal of rejection. They don’t really bother me when it is something that I feel like I need to work on, but the one today really irked me.
They pretty much just dismissed me off hand because I didn’t have the right course requirements. Unfortunately, the “right course requirements” are highly specialized senior level classes. Which I am supposed to have taken, what, my sophomore year in order to get an internship with them?
This was just stupid on their part in my opinion, but the interviewer really conveyed the idea of “Wow, you don’t know exactly what you want to do yet? Well, you’ll never get a job with us.”
And that’s just the thing. I don’t think I will want to know what I want to do by the time I get out of school. What I really want to do is just take the classes I find interesting and try to make myself as well-rounded as possible. The thing is, I went into electrical engineering because I felt like I could do a lot of things with it, not because I want to limit myself to one specific focus.
But I am afraid because I feel like the economy is going out of control, and I’m sitting here going It’s not my fault, because goddamnit, I wasn’t old enough to vote EITHER of the times Bush got elected. I haven’t taken out a single loan in my entire life, subprime or not. I have also not invested in these huge investment banks.
And then there is this fear that to get hired into anything, you have to be the best at it, especially if unemployment rates are going to go up and if things are going to get worse, but I just don’t feel like I’m going to be that person who is the best at some small thing. I want to be good at a lot of things.
The hard part is, through all of this, is that I really don’t want to do any of this for long. I just want some security and to know I’m not going to be screwed when I get out of college, unable to get into med. school and unable to get an engineering job.
