For months, I've been looking for an internship. Despite applying to numerous companies and different organizations, I couldn't get accepted to any position because either the company I applied was not hiring interns due to Covid restrictions, or they simply were not interested in my application.
As a result of several rejections, I started to feel lost because I was also not sure anymore if I actually wanted to pursue a career in the art history field. I was applying to internships in art galleries and museums, but all the rejections made me doubt myself and lead me to reconsider my career plans.
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What did I really want to do? I didn't know.
I'm studying psychology at university, but a career in psychology was not appealing to me. I enjoyed art history, but throughout all those months my mental state and thoughts about these have started to change. Maybe a career in art history would not satisfy me at all. I started to read articles about the misleading nature of the common saying "pursue your passion". This particular video below was really life-changing for me, as it pushed me to reconsider all my beliefs and assumptions about my career plans in a completely rational and grounded way.
I loved art history, but I had never considered other career options that were much more stable and viable alternatives.
And, while having all these confusing thoughts, I stumbled across an internship posting on Linkedin from a career-education guidance company a month ago, and I immediately got excited like I never did before. I was satisfying all the requirements for the position, plus I thought what the company was doing super interesting. I prepared a special CV for that application and I really felt like I had a chance of getting accepted to that internship because something felt really right and different this time.
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And I was right! After reviewing my CV, they sent me several questions to answer. It took me 3 full days to answer them because I wanted to get this internship so much thus I spent a lot of time contemplating all the questions to answer them in the best way.
I passed this level too and then they invited me for an interview, which happened 2 weeks ago. And I passed the interview too. I expected that after the interview, they would announce if I got the position or not. However, the interview was actually not the last step, as they then sent me a really challenging task which was due today!
They wanted me to find 10 interesting jobs that will be important in the future, and these jobs had to be multidisciplinary. Then, I had to prepare social media posts and a video to present them. And I had to do these tasks using two different software.
I felt quite stressed at first because it was my exam week and I didn't know how I would learn that software in two weeks, do all the research, and prepare the materials while having several exams. However, I felt also quite excited because it was actually a fun task, and if I planned my time efficiently I could do a really good job.
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These past two weeks were intense! I basically worked non-stop but I motivated myself thinking that it would be all worth it. Finally, two hours ago I made my presentation to the company, and they were really impressed! Like, a lot, I could just see the admiration on their faces and words. They said they were really impressed by everything I did and appreciated my efforts for undertaking such a challenging task in the middle of my exams. They also told that they were aware of the difficulty of the task, but they still wanted to see who would undertake it and who would be scared.
Even though they had a policy of not announcing the selected interns during the interview, they decided to offer me the position right during the interview because it was too obvious that I was selected it would make no sense to make me wait for the results.
Anyway, I'm extremely happy about all this process!! I'm also really excited about starting this internship which will start approximately a month from now. I'm also really glad that all this overthinking phase will disappear because I won't have to think so much about the career plans for the next few months.