You Will Be Okay

I’m a senior. And like all seniors — senior citizens included — we spend a lot of time reflecting on our pasts. So let me be maudlin for a second. Let me tell you what I’d wish I’d known entering CMU. What I wish I could tell everyone here: I know. I was there. Perhaps I was in deeper than everyone else. Perhaps it was just me. But for that sliver of chance that someone else is in the same place I was in — this is for you. 

I entered CMU with the same kind of bright-eyed trepidation as the rest of you. We were such stars all our lives, weren’t we? Such achievers. And we made it, didn’t we? We made it to Carnegie Mellon University; we’ve proven our worth to ourselves and to others. I embarked on my first year with verve, ready to mingle with those donning the same flush of passion as I did. The green of the Lawn, which rolled like nature’s very own red carpet to Hamerschlag’s regal facade, overlaying the Cathedral of Learning in the distance. Further back, the magnificent sunsets that always made tourists and students alike pause to take pictures. On my way to class, I’d look at Pittsburgh sprawling into the distance. I’d think: I made it.

It didn’t take long for the flush to fade. Did I think I was finished? Did I think I could finally rest? That I could step away from arbitrary benchmarks of success and open my heart fully to all that the world had to offer? I did. Sue me, but I did.

High school was awful. The grades, the standardized testing, the competition, the unbearable pressure. It left me with crippling anxiety and a dysfunctional identity. 

I’ve realized that it was all child’s play. I thought college was a place for healing, and you’ll soon see that it was, technically, but it was first a place for reckoning. College is like exiting an arena from a game you’ve won to find that the entire world is playing a much harder game you’ve never trained for. It’s like swimming for the coast, so close to making landfall, only to be wrenched further away by a riptide. I was marooned.

I did not know how to navigate LinkedIn. I did not know what resumes should look like. This was not simply writing a 500-word personal essay; this was an art — of crafting who you are. A complete sublimation of all your brokenness — all your flaws — to become this perfect yet imperfect professional.

(Stay with me here. There’s a point to all this. I won’t just be going on and on about how painful job-searching is — I’m sure you’re well aware of that.)

~~~

Anyway, I was trash at all of it, naturally. My resume was trash. My interviewing skills were steaming garbage. The way I rambled on was so horrible that a pair of interviewers during freshman year, after rejecting me, advised me in the email to use the STAR method (Little did I know then, that after a couple years, seeing the STAR method anywhere would make me recoil in disgust). 

Still, I stayed afloat freshman year. Sophomore year was when I started to plunge. Something within had seized me, and it dragged me under. I did not care that internships were “only important” the summer after junior year. I did not care for all the reassurances. Somehow, I had received an invitation to interview for Amazon in late October. The month in between passed in a dizzying haze. When the day came, I went to a classroom in Baker that I’d reserved. I trembled for hours on an empty stomach as I watched the clock tick. 

I couldn’t recount a single thing I said in those two hours for a million dollars. All I know is that when it was over, the wrenching in my gut ceased. Later that day, I went to my friend’s birthday dinner, and I laughed for the first time in a while. I was still nervous for the results, but I was done. Right? 

Wrong, again.

~~~

A few weeks later, I got an email from Amazon: Thank you for the time you have invested in the Amazon recruitment process. We know that juggling school commitments and job interviews is a lot to manage. We’ve identified you as a qualified and talented candidate; however, our planning process is taking longer than expected, so we are unable to offer you a position with Amazon at this time. Translating silver-tongued corporate speak into real-life speak: They didn’t know if I would receive an offer or not. They didn’t know anything.

The economy did a landslide, but, let’s be real, my mental health was there long before it. From November to May, for the rest of my sophomore year, I drowned, and I drowned. With every rejection, I descended further. I spent the whole winter break on a design challenge for Duolingo (That one hurt). I hardly ate; I could not stomach food, wracked with anxiety for an upcoming interview or for any update from Amazon. In February, my recruiter promised me they would send offers within a week. But after two weeks, I still got nothing but silence. 

At some point, I had become numb to the no-reply emails. One time, my friends and I planned to go to Stack’d to have a Galentine’s Day — to buy roses, and stuff ourselves on burgers and fries. I was so weak it hurt to walk there. I remember they remarked on how delicate I looked, concerned for my health.

Spring break, I went to Turks and Caicos with them, and for a solitary week, I was given grace. I still see it so clearly: The blinding blue of the water, the pearly sand. One day, we went to Grace Bay beach, whose coast was lined with beach houses for billionaires. I went jet skiing for the first time, hanging onto my friends as we skimmed over hundreds of stingrays that floated just beneath the surface. We sang the H2O: Just Add Water theme song as we swept past moss-covered caves, diamond water splashing up in our wake. 

“‘Cause I’m no ordinary girl

I’m from the deep blue underworld

Land or sea, I’ve got the power

If I just believe”

There is a strange release that comes from distancing yourself from all your struggles. Pittsburgh, in all its dun glory, receded into something hazy, like a nightmare. I could almost believe it was never real. I could almost believe that gold and blue were the only colors of the world, the only colors that ever mattered. Almost.

~~~

In late April, Amazon notified me that they could not give me an offer. When May came, I was desperate. I begged UPMC, which had rejected me but had seemed promising, for a spot, offering unpaid labor. It humiliates me now, to remember that. The weekend before finals, I flew to Atlanta, Georgia with a friend to a Taylor Swift concert — but even that experience was marred as I waited for a reply. It looks promising, they said. We just need to get logistics worked out. 

And even after all this time, after everything, was it too much for me to hope? The morning I was to board a flight back to Pittsburgh, I received a reply, and it was not a confirmation. It was an apology. 

Up until then, I had still been thrashing, kicking my legs to reach for that distant glimmer of light. I was tired, not just from the past couple years, but all the years before that. Tired of always straining for something, reaching for more. There must have been something fundamentally wrong with me to have all these rejections, I thought. There must be something distasteful about me. I could not do this again junior year, and again senior year, and again every two to three years until I turned thirty so that I could “build up my resume.” I could not. I took my final exams in a state of complete numbness, thinking, I can’t.

When I got to my dorm, I knew, with a pinch of self-awareness, the dangerous route my thoughts were taking. I texted a close friend and my mom: Will you still love me even though I’m a failure? They both called me, although my friend beat her to the punch. I cried for the first time (Can you believe it?), in all those months. I cried for my shattered confidence, my crumbled sense of self-worth. I did not know how to survive in this world, which demanded everything from me with no quarter. 

My friend told me something that made the darkness buckle and my perspective — if not completely transform — start to shift on its axis: Something is only considered a failure if you don't try. And you tried. You tried. 

~~~

One good thing about hitting rock bottom is that, truly, the only way left to go is up. And up I went, their love and support being the anchor with which I pulled myself up. Over that summer after sophomore year, I did research and freelance design work. I adopted an elderly rescue cat, whom I named Willow. I went to Switzerland and France for the first time. That summer, I experienced beauty and adventure and tenderness. 

You see, when I went to Turks and Caicos, I was still lost. The island was a small opening in the clouds, letting in a shaft of light. But Switzerland and France came as a sunrise. The tentative, promising moments when light peeks out from the horizon. 

~~~

There was more to this whole ordeal than just validation. It was this existential fear that I could not make it outside of the bubble of high school, outside of the aegis of my parents. This dread that I was too broken, and everyone would be able to tell, even through a laptop screen on Zoom. But when I finally broke through the surface, gasped for breath, swam my way ashore, and gazed at the sea of my sophomore year, I realized that nothing had changed. The world kept spinning, the sun kept shining, and the people in my life remained. Nothing was ruined. 

I will be okay. This refrain played in my head throughout the first semester of junior year. I will be okay. If I didn’t get an internship that year. If I didn’t even get a job during my senior year. I am more than this.

I did get that internship. And I got a return offer. You must be rolling your eyes right now. Great. Everything you just said is meaningless now. You’ve gotten what you wanted. You have no business telling me how to feel. 

Perhaps. But this is what I will tell you: I was happy, yes. I was relieved. That’s it, though. The delight — that lasted for about two hours. Slowly, it all came creeping back, the same demons in a different form: It was all just luck. I don’t actually deserve it. I was rejected by so many other companies. They know the truth. They couldn’t be fooled. The scars from sophomore year … they sting when pulled. Make no mistake, I am not healed just because I’ve achieved my goals. Far from it. 

And that’s the crux of the matter. It was never about the internships, never about that at all. A lifetime of self-flagellation and perfectionism led me to this point. I don’t know if what I suffered sophomore year was a good thing. That is a question that I don’t think can be answered. I can only tell what happened: A part of me was left in tatters, but this part of me was mercurial. It strengthened me only when I succeeded; when I failed, even by a margin, it tore me down. I am so glad to be rid of it. Without it, I have been forced to inspect who I am without the glamor of success and be okay with what I see.

I am happy with where I am now, but I would have been happy either way. I am not naive enough to believe that my words will prevent you all from suffering the way I did, but I will try my hardest. I am here, wading back, so that I can extend my hand out to you. My successes are tiny beams of light, but they cannot outshine the resplendence of knowing that I don’t need them. I know I can endure my next failure, whenever it happens. And I would sacrifice success at any moment in order to preserve this peace. 

~~~

In a few weeks, as I’m writing this, I’ll be going to New Orleans for fall break, and it will be like full brightness breaking across the sky. I will stumble through the night on Bourbon Street, the air sticky on my skin and hurricanes sticky on my lips. Jazz will roll through my ears, sultry and smooth. And I won’t regret that I could have been this fearless sophomore year. That I could have abandoned it all so much earlier. Because to do so would mean to spare a single thought for all these companies, these universities, their avarice, and I refuse to do so. I’ll waltz into voodoo shops, close my eyes in the haunted beauty of cemeteries. I’ll trail my fingers through whiskey trees, lift my glass, and I won’t think of them at all. 

For so long, you have chased and chased. Telling yourself that once it’s done, you can rest. But have you ever truly let yourself go? Or have you just found another distant star to aim for? One day, if it hasn’t happened already, you won’t be able to reach it. The thought is staggering. It is terrifying, I know. But it must be thought of, because it will happen. When it does, you’ll have to stop and look around, like I did, except I promise — you won’t find a barren wasteland. The sun is so brilliant over here. When it does, please know this: You will be okay.