Culpwrit

 

By Ceci Edelberg

At some point in my college career, I decided that junior year was the year of relationships and internships. I’ve been saying I would have a “junior-year boyfriend” and a good junior-year summer internship since I was a freshman. So far, we have been 50% successful, and my only important announcement has taken place on LinkedIn. But I can’t complain; I kind of got my dream internship and I am not spending my nights crying over a guy – single and employed is a good place to be.

While going through the process of dating and finding a job, I came to the conclusion that finding a boyfriend has a lot more in common with finding an internship than I would like to admit. Here are a couple of the parallels. But before I start, I just want to say I am not an expert on either topic, and these are just observations I have made while going through these processes.

Cover letter = first date – you are honestly putting a lot of effort into something while being uncertain of how much you are getting in return. Your friends and the internet have an awful lot of opinions on “the right way to do it.” You have to do wayyyyyy too many of them just to find the one. I also never really feel like doing any of these things.

Tinder and LinkedIn can feel equally hopeless – PR job! In a cool company! OKAY OKAY I MIGHT SWIPE RIGHT. In the middle of nowhere? For $0.65/hour? Too good to be true. LEFT. There is something about the endless scrolling (yes, ofc I have LinkedIn on my phone) and swiping and the feeling of “ugh I’m never going to find anything” that is sooooooo prevalent when using both apps.

You are always dealing with rejection and ghosting – 

situationship 🤝 recruiters

Not answering you back.

It feels like yelling into a void – I apply, and I never hear back. I match and never get a message. Same thing.

Lack of communication can make you go crazy – Both that frat boy and that flaky internship are making you crazy. I get it. The reason is that they are not telling you when you are hearing back. If you tell me you are letting me know next week, LET ME KNOW NEXT WEEK!

 There is no “equality” in matches – Okay in relationships you are either settling or dating outside of your league (in most cases). It is like “Omg why is she with him” or “Omg how did she pull him” and I am not talking looks-wise. I am talking holistically. Internships are the same. You are either overqualified (bored at your job) or underqualified (stressed, scared). It’s also not impossible to find a match, but during the search, I did feel a lot like that. I felt like I was either too overqualified or that it would be super hard for me to get the ones that were “prestigious.” And I feel the same about dating. And on that topic …

Knowing your worth makes it hard – One of my favorite scenes in any movie is Jo’s ending monologue from Little Women. I think about that scene so often – she’s like “Women have souls, and minds are made for more than just love, but I am tired of being alone.” And I feel THAT. For example, if I wanted to have a boyfriend, I could. If I wanted an internship secured earlier than I did, I could. And with the monologue, I feel what Jo is saying so deeply, and the temptation of just settling because you can’t find exactly what you want and you just want to have something, anything. And there are days where I am like “I wish I didn’t know my worth.” But alas, here we are. I know I am a good candidate (in both senses, I guess?) so I know I won’t be happy with any internship or boyfriend. I have high standards for myself, the people who surround me, and where I spend my time. But that does make the options slimmer.

Being in America changes the number of opportunities –

(if we don’t know each other personally I was born and raised in Argentina, moved to the U.S. with my family when I was 13.)

When it comes to jobs, it is like being here multiplies opportunities by a million. While I was overwhelmed with the number of options I had when applying, I always did it with an immense sense of gratitude. The U.S. has a billion PR firms and like all the big companies and the amount of opportunities felt endless in a way that it just wouldn’t have in Argentina – and I don’t take any of it for granted. However, when it comes to dating, it’s the exact opposite.

I have been known to criticize Gainesville men, and I want to apologize… it’s America. Here is the deal – sometimes it is hard for me to see eye-to-eye with most American men when it comes to dating. There’s just a lot of cultural differences. I have found GREAT American friends in college, and this is not me saying that I don’t like Americans in any way shape or form, but when it comes to dating, it’s been harder. Latinos (especially Argentineans) have a kind of finesse and a way of flirting and dancing that I am drawn to (we will look over the machismo for this one). Additionally, I recently discovered that many Americans also don’t see me in a “dating light.” I think, while the idea of dating a “spicy” Latina might be attractive to some, the reality of having a 5-foot-nothing curly-haired girl who is super passionate and has strong feelings about many things as a partner is less appealing to most American college boys – and I get it. Out of all the guys (there have not been that many) that have been relevant (I am not 100% sure I was relevant to him) in my life, only one has been American (I mean like fully white and American parents almost certainly too). There are some American guys throughout college that I have been interested in but ended up being friends with, and I think it is that the way I am used to flirting translates as friends here.

Staying optimistic is hard – You really do need to trust the process and stop comparing your path to others. Stop threatening to move to mountains and make jam ala Olivia Pope (no matter how badly you want to).

If you don’t hear back for two months, they probably don’t like you – Listen, when they want you, you’ll know. The boy that never initiates anything? He does not want you. The company you applied to through LinkedIn three months ago has not even sent you a confirmation email. They also do not want you. Womp womp, as my sisters would say. The company I ended up accepting an offer with always made me feel wanted. They told me I would hear back about interviews in 3-4 weeks, and they emailed me after one. They quickly set up the interview and communicated every step of the way. When I look at my friend’s relationships, the guys have always made them feel wanted and loved from the start.

There is no “right way” of doing things – Send everyone LinkedIn requests. Wait at least ten minutes to reply to that guy you met at the bar. Apply only to five jobs. Do not make out on the first date. Actually, apply to forty-five jobs. Exhausting. My theory is that no one can be an expert on either topic – no matter how much they claim to be so. Even Carrie Bradshaw (THE dating guru) was always saying “I couldn’t help but wonder…” like nothing in her column was a rule, it was all just kind of questions and musings. So (and I can’t stress this enough) eff. That. Do what feels right to you. It is not the same for all fields, and I understand that coding exams and consulting case interviews (apparently) are real things, and some people might have more knowledge on those. I am just talking about interviewing, resumes and all of that. There is not one size fits all. I feel for both dating and jobs we get too caught up in listening to outsiders and trying to guess what they are looking for instead of just listening, researching or asking. Be yourself. The right person/company will want you for that.

Trying not to think ahead is hard – I feel like I constantly need to remind myself that my internship might not be my full-time and my boyfriend might not be my husband – and that is okay.

What you think you want might not be what you actually want – I see this a lot with my friends who have boyfriends. Once I saw them together, I was like “Duh,” but I do not know if they knew that is what they wanted. For me, I am interning at an entertainment company, and I am so excited – but I never thought it was something I could want. I applied to a lot of political stuff and I intended to apply to PR agencies as well. I have a very clear idea of the type of guy I like, there is definitely a personality I am attracted to (Roy Kent from Ted Lasso, Jess from Gilmore Girls, Charlie Lastra from Book Lovers. Very much “I hate everyone but you” and SMART if you were curious). That being said, I do not know if my next person is going to be like that, it might be a “Golden Retriever”, a social guy. I mean he is going to have to be smart.

I kind of want to get recruited – How cool would that be? The dating equivalent would be just getting asked on a date without putting in any effort.

Stay delusional – I mean that. Just apply. Just talk to that boy. It works, I promise. I am interning somewhere I never thought I would.

I have to admit that I am writing a blog about this, and comparing these two things might explain a lot. Maybe I can’t approach finding a boyfriend like I approach finding an internship. Maybe I need to let myself go and fall in love and smell the flowers and dance with little birds.

Anyways, as always thank you for reading! Connect with me on LinkedIn, ask me out or set me up with your sons! Let’s do something casual like the New York Times 36 questions that lead to love or something.

If you like the blog, you can follow @leakeddiary to keep up with and read all previous entries! (Not all as professionally oriented).

Ceci Edelberg is a junior at the University of Florida studying public relations with minors in history and Latin America studies. At school, she is the managing director of Alpha PR, the PRSSA-affiliated student-run firm, chief of staff of the Hispanic Student Association and DEI Chair of Alpha Epsilon Phi. She loves listening to podcasts, trying out curly hair products and spending hours chatting with her roommates on the floor of her college apartment.