Know Your Worth

31

The rest of the week felt fantastic, even though I had more homework and submissions to keep track of. 

My grades me a boost of rejuvenation and positivity toward my academics, and even made me like Blackwell even more. Funny how grades can completely change your outlook on school. 

Theo and I were still texting quite frequently, but it was all just dumb nonsense where we would argue about which type of coffee or pasta is superior. I did like texting with him, he would send me the wonkiest Whatsapp stickers that I stole to my growing collection. 

With this newfound confidence, I suddenly started taking extra care to be punctual for lessons and making sure to book more consultations here and there to clarify any doubts. 

Ever since I unceremoniously dropped out of the cooking club, I had a lot more free time on my hands. I hadn't taken part in any extracurriculars, and I liked it that way. 

Instead, I searched for internships that I could apply to with my new grades, or take part in any teaching assistant jobs that were offered to university students. 

Booking a session with the Education and Career Guidance counselor through the QR codes that were pasted around the school walls made me feel less overwhelmed on which applications to invest my time in. 

I was lucky, I booked Mrs Tesha Subramaniam on the same day I scanned the code and met with her at her office beside the staff room for all the lecturers. 

She was extremely welcoming to the point where I thought she was loveliness personified. She was so happy that a student had come to visit her because she had baked and brought her muffins, and made sure I ate two of them. 

They were aromatic and delicious, so soft and warm and buttery, like the melt-in-your-mouth kind of food. If she ever wanted a career switch, I foresaw a bright future in baking for her. 

One thing that I loved about her was that when she sat down, she meant business. She was fast, incredibly efficient, and quick to filter out all the internships that I had mentioned to her to fit my personal needs. 

She narrowed the list of fifteen internships down to three, and they happened to be quite competitive as well. 

The good thing was that I was the first person to approach her for them, and she was able to point out all the necessary requirements that I needed to pay extra attention to, namely the specific personal statements and the teachers' testimonials. 

Apparently, my high school ones just wouldn't do. I had to start afresh with a new personal statement and teacher recommendations, which was a relief because I was early, and could have more time to select the lecturers or tutors I wanted to vouch for me. 

I remembered the last-minute craze to get teachers' recommendations back in high school, and I was prepared to not have to go through it again.

I sat in her quaint, air-conditioned room on the soft plush chair for an hour, and got all the information I needed to go about my applications. 

I grabbed my laptop from my dorm, went to the library, and started sending out emails to four of my lecturers and tutors to write recommendations for me. 

All of them responded rapidly, and I had to physically restrain myself from whooping out in joy when they all said yes. I suppose that was how the X-factor contestants felt, and it felt glorious. 

Finally,  things were going right in my life. The stars were aligning to a promising path of success here, and I also started planning out the rough skeletons of my personal statements for each of the three internships. 

The first one was a Microsoft internship that was geared specifically toward students studying economics. That was the most legit, prestigious one out of the three. It required me to work in the Cambridge lab or the New York Lab for ten weeks, working with a full-time researcher on a project. It was also the closest to Blackwell, making it convenient. The aim was to produce at least an academic paper. 

The second one was at Goldman Sachs, and it looked like the most intimidating application to fill out. The selection process was long, with video interviews, in-person interviews and essays to be submitted. The timeline for applying was pretty long as well, but luckily it didn't coincide with final exams timings.

The last one was an entrepreneurship program for business students, regardless of whether they took a major or a minor. It included marketing research and analysis, coming up with sales strategies, and even handling social media accounts for public relations at Snapchat Headquarters. 

I had worked out three drafts of my personal statement structures, one for each, and was still unsatisfied with them. 

I needed to go out and make some new friends in junior year, it seemed. Hopefully, one of them would be willing to help a poor, clueless freshman out. 

I wanted to ask Sam if she had any of those friends, but I realised that I couldn't use her as my social crutch all the time. I needed to put myself out there, far out of my comfort zone to gather the courage to approach someone for help. 

I didn't know anyone much in Blackwell, which was kind of sad, since I had been here for a few months now. But in my defense, all universities were huge places with a lot of people. 

I decided to not do something so rash. As much as I had these bold thoughts of pushing myself, I ended up going on Instagram, finding mutuals, and stalking their profiles to see if they were older than I was. 

I came across a girl named Danisha, who was following Sam and I requested to follow her. Minutes later, she accepted and requested to follow me back. 

I direct messaged her on whether she could give me some pointers for internship applications, and she sent me some workshop links that focused on teaching students on building their resumes and internship applications and gave me some do's and don'ts. 

I thanked her with a ton of emojis and signed up for those workshops as well. They did clash with some of my homework submission dates, so that made me spend two more hours rescheduling my work. 

It was stressful, thinking about how much more hectic my life was going to be as time went on, but I needed to have something on my CV other than grades. I didn't want to waste four years on extracurriculars but instead spent a concentrated amount of time on some big internships for a couple of weeks, and then get some reprieve here and there. 

It was a solid plan, and I hoped that I would get accepted for at least one of them. 

I wasn't all superstitious, but breaking up with Simon was the start of something good. It all be a coincidence, right? 

Maybe this was what I should have been doing all along, not having any boyfriends and solely spending time improving my resume and CV. 

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