As I write this, I’m sitting on my bed at home, theoretically ‘relaxed’ for the first time in weeks. Classes are on pause, there are no GroupMe notifications from various organizations on campus, and I finally have access to a kitchen that isn’t crowded at 6 p.m. sharp. However, beneath the surface-level calm of any break lurks the very thing every Cornell student promises themselves they won’t think about — getting an internship for the upcoming summer.
I promised myself that over break I wouldn’t open my laptop, or write any sentences that contained the words: ‘Dear Hiring Manager.’ I didn’t keep that promise, and haven’t since, thanks to Cornell and the many students who treat the concept of a ‘break’ like a rumor: something we hear about but never fully experience.
The truth is, I’m not relaxed at all. My break consisted less of its promised rest and more of the frantic googling that comes with the internship search: internships for undergraduate students; research programs; NYC opportunities; how many internships should I apply to at once without looking unhinged? Every application portal wants something increasingly specific: a tailored resume, a cover letter, a graded writing sample, a transcript, a statement of interest, at least two references and at this point, probably my blood type.
Somehow, the entire ordeal of applying to internships feels eerily familiar. It’s giving senior year of high school energy — that same blend of dread, hope and compulsive spreadsheet tracking. Except now, instead of crafting the perfect ‘Why Cornell?’ essay, I'm trying to convince employers that my skill set is extraordinary enough to merit an eight-hour-a-day internship compensated with ‘professional experience.’
I wish I could say I’m the only one on this emotional rollercoaster. But, this is Cornell. Everyone is refreshing Handshake and LinkedIn like it’s a volatile stock ticker. Everyone is silently comparing timelines. Everyone is pretending they’re not panicking while very clearly panicking.
If you want to hear the truth, we all are pretending, and some people are just better at pretending they are not.
No matter your field — whether you’re in finance and began applying in December, in marketing or nonprofit working staring down January deadlines or in publishing hopefully holding out until February — the anxiety is the same. It’s the quiet, persistent fear that somehow everyone is ahead of you, even though no one actually knows what they’re doing.
For business majors, it’s recruiting season that starts before classes even begin. For pre-law and pre-med students, it’s research positions that demand experience you need to somehow already have. For humanities majors, it’s the existential dread of reading internships that want two years of prior industry experience and proficiency in three Adobe programs. At the end of the day, for literally every Cornellian, it’s the constant flood of advice that contradicts itself: apply early, but also wait for more openings; tailor every resume, but also apply to as many places as possible; be confident, but also realistic.
But here’s the part we never say out loud: half of the anxiety comes from the culture around us. Cornell students are ambitious, driven and chronically scared of feeling behind. We attend a university where productivity is a personality trait and burnout is normalized or encouraged. So, at Cornell, the internship search becomes another silent competition, another metric we measure ourselves against and another reason to panic scroll on our phones at 1 a.m. every night comparing ourselves to what we see from others.
Still, maybe the most comforting truth is this: nobody has it as together as they pretend to. The student who told you they ‘already have everything lined up’ probably doesn’t. The friend who swears they’re not stressed absolutely is. The people who look the calmest are usually the ones with dozens of open drafts of the same cover letter and resume.
So yes, breaks from Cornell are supposed to be a pause, but for many of us, it’s also the moment the summer internship scramble begins. The moment the tabs pile up, the moment the googling spirals and worst of all: the moment the anxiety sinks in.
I think that, maybe, the trick isn’t to pretend we’re not anxious, but to admit that the search is overwhelming and that nobody is navigating it gracefully. Maybe the point isn’t to have everything figured out by the end of the winter, but to survive the process without losing your mind — or your laptop to overheating.
And maybe, just maybe, ‘relaxing over break’ doesn’t have to mean ignoring the internship search entirely. It can mean letting yourself breathe through it, allowing the uncertainty to exist and remembering that one summer, no matter how prestigious or unstructured, won’t define your entire future.
Here we are in the dead of the cold Ithaca winter, peak internship-search season, where it’s totally okay to not have something locked down yet or to still be searching. Research shows that job search anxiety is widespread among university students and is linked with lower well-being and flourishing during the search process. This should never be the case. Every student, especially at Cornell, is capable of being successful and having their dream job. We are all smart individuals who truly care about our future and the world around us, and any employer would be lucky to have one of us Cornellians working with them.
Even if Handshake doesn’t make it feel that way.
Maya Rothbard is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at msr295@cornell.edu.
