Over Intersession, I did not fly out to Cancun, explore the other side of the Atlantic, or even travel back home to Connecticut. I stayed on campus to prep for interviews. Scheduling several hours a day, I met up with friends to practice, went to the library, and read up on the infamous Case in Point. After hearing, time and time again, the tired trope about the importance of internships, I feared being that one junior who would enter the month of March with nothing to show for it, starting my career down the wrong path.
After one failed interview and zero future ones on the horizon, that fear started to become more and more of an ugly reality.
This article is not meant to be a pity party (although, I’ve never been opposed to a good party before). But it does suck; it sucks a lot. It’s hard not to view the rejection email (or worse, the dreaded lack of one long after your friends have already been accepted) as a rejection of yourself as a person. After all, isn’t a resume literally supposed to be a description of “you” on a piece of paper? When others are walking around campus in suits, heading to the Career Center or Dinky Train to New York, it is easy to fall into the mindset that you’re the only one being left behind, while everyone else is experiencing success.
But we have to remember that’s not the case. At Princeton, it is easy to measure the metrics of success and failure on the accomplishments of others. Cherry-picking the positive stories, we view our own failures as the exceptions, rather than the norm. We have to remember that’s not true. Granted, it is easier said than done. Over-hearing the conversations of people going over finance terms or listening to their self-congratulatory discussion of how they successfully estimated annual gas consumption for a consulting case question, while prepping for a superday or second-round, it is easy to get annoyed or dejected about the internship process entirely.
However, in these times, it is important to remember that we are more than just the piece of paper, brief phone call, or one-hour chat that we have been judged by. And this is not exclusive to jobs and internships. Whether it is bickering, auditioning for an acapella group, or trying to walk-on to a sports team, failure is never fun, and don’t let me try to convince you otherwise. With this week full of interviews and bicker, it is more prominent than usual. However, it is definitely a much more commonly occurring experience than we let ourselves think it is.
That said, it does not mean we should pretend that everything with failure is perfectly okay. The worst thing we can do is to ignore our problems, tucking our failures into the emotional back pocket, never to be discussed again. We should talk about our failures, as much, if not more so, than our successes. Falling into the trap of blaming ourselves – running the hypotheticals through our head of “if only I had prepped that one extra day or been a little more social, then everything would be different” – is not only false, but also dangerous. Convincing ourselves that we are the sole problem places a mental limitation on ourselves, potentially making things worse.
Princeton took a great step normalizing failure by launching the Princeton Perspective Project. Although the site was officially established last fall, I feel that, at this point of the year, it is especially important to bring it up again. The site contains videos and stories of fellow friends and classmates, all of whom have gone through hidden issues of their own, yet are viewed as accomplished people. Listening to the experiences of others, it becomes easier to realize that we are much more than our accomplishments (or our mistakes). In the end, we cannot change what happened. But we can learn from our experiences, preventing our past from holding back our future.
Ben Dinovelli is a Wilson School major from Mystic, Conn. He can bereached at bjd5@princeton.edu.
Read More
Progressives failed a lesson in free speech
Anais Mobarak“The recent controversy surrounding Charter Club has demonstrated that progressive voices on campus have failed to recognize the value of free speech beyond its usefulness as a political instrument. Thus, as a community, we must work to foster an ideologically-free understanding of free speech.”
“The recent controversy surrounding Charter Club has demonstrated that progressive voices on campus have failed to recognize the value of free speech beyond its usefulness as a political instrument. Thus, as a community, we must work to foster an ideologically-free understanding of free speech.”
Campus through a lens: Announcing the ‘Prince’s inaugural columnists
Eleanor Clemans-CopeReading a series of columns by the same author is seeing things through the writer’s lens — it’s looking at campus through the ‘Christofer glasses’ or the ‘Eleanor specs.’ This is the thinking behind having named columns.
Reading a series of columns by the same author is seeing things through the writer’s lens — it’s looking at campus through the ‘Christofer glasses’ or the ‘Eleanor specs.’ This is the thinking behind having named columns.
Bring back the course packet
Abigail Rabieh“With the recent news that Labyrinth Books will no longer supply the coursebooks for Princeton classes, we are facing a new era in which all readings will only be accessible by some digital medium, whether that be via Course Reserves or online ordering from faraway publishers. While some may see this as a step in the right direction of modernity, the increasing digitalization of our scholarship hurts our learning.”
“With the recent news that Labyrinth Books will no longer supply the coursebooks for Princeton classes, we are facing a new era in which all readings will only be accessible by some digital medium, whether that be via Course Reserves or online ordering from faraway publishers. While some may see this as a step in the right direction of modernity, the increasing digitalization of our scholarship hurts our learning.”
