Instead of getting a jump start on some homework tonight before break starts Friday, I instead wrote cover letters for jobs that I’m very under-qualified for and most likely won’t even hear from once I send them my resume. I met with my awesome career center counselor today who is helping me through the very confusing, painful, and downright frustrating task of looking for jobs. Since I last met with her a few weeks ago, I found about dozen jobs, either through a job site or some aimless (and desperate) Googling.

I’ve narrowed down my job search to three categories: communications/marketing, sports, and higher education. Graduating with a Communications degree can lend itself to many different avenues, which is one of the reasons why I decided to go into that major (and the only thing I’m actually decent at is writing). I really loved what I did last summer at my internship with a marketing group, and I would like to put most of my search into that area, whether it’s at a marketing group or in a public relations department of a company. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m totally into sports, so that’s obviously another path for me to go down. There’s a few teams around where I live, but right now, the Red Sox are out of the question – I plan on living at home to save money after graduation (it’s in my five year plan, though). Finally, higher education is another option; I think my work in Student Activities opened me up to working with college students and all of the different opportunities.

In my running list of jobs I think I could possibly qualify for, some of the companies are ESPN (obviously and even more so because Bristol is 45 minutes away from my house), MassMutual (my dad has worked there for 30 years and they call my house a lot at 2:00am when the website is crashing/breaking/crumbling, which requires my dad to fix it), and AIC and Bay Path. There’s a few other random ones in there, but for now, those are the ones I’m focusing on.

So I wrote about three cover letters tonight and plan to do a few more over break. It’s hard to tailor my experiences to specific qualifications the companies are looking for, but this is the point where I pat little sophomore Becky on the back for getting involved on campus. That’s how I got all of my experiences, leadership skills, and connections with faculty and staff.

That being said, those connections are going to come in handy when it comes to applying to grad school. I’m planning on applying for the online Masters of Arts in Communication here at Western New England because A. it’s online, and B. I already know the entire Communication department. My advisor originally told me that I couldn’t apply until I had my diploma, however, I found out today that that isn’t necessarily true. So now I have to kick my butt into gear and apply. I have to have three recommendation forms and a personal essay. Plus some other stuff that I haven’t figured out yet. I’m going to email the head of graduate admissions over break and set up a time to meet with him to go over the requirements so I don’t miss anything.

I’m trying not to get too ahead of myself, because that just ends up making things worse for me and I get stressed out. I’m taking it one day at a time and spend 15 minutes a day looking for jobs. My career center counselor is amazing, so I’m grateful to have her helping me through this. After break, I’m going to see her to go over the cover letters I wrote before I apply for those jobs.

To my college seniors: how are you dealing with the process of looking/applying for jobs?