It's been a while since I last updated, and there's been a number of reasons for that. Mostly, it's been the fact that I was (a) computer-less for nearly three weeks, (b) moved from the Southern U.S. back to my Large State School in the Midwest, and (c) the sheer stress of job-hunting.
I was watching True Life on MTV (not a show I usually watch, I assure you) while I was exercising the other day. The program was about young professionals who had recently been laid off. (Even MTV is aware of the economy - that's crazy.)
I bring this up because one of the people being followed around with a camera commented, "Finding a job is a full-time job."
It is. It really is. Between the constant resume edits, cover letter compositions, the career center appointments, scouring the career center site, filling out applications on the firms' sites, attending career fairs, emailing contacts at the companies, following up with Alumni you've networked with (or maybe that's just me), and begging friends in all walks of life and disciplines to look over your work - and then managing all of that correspondence? A full time job is a mild description at best. Not to mention interview preparation, reading interview guides if you're expecting a case interview, and worrying that everything you're doing isn't nearly enough.
So, basically, my advice is this: spend you summer doing all of the resume writes and rewrites, composing cover letters, and reading the case interview guides. Stay in contact with career services personnel over the summer. Ask for resume feedback in July, not November (or even September, like I am). And finally, for the love of criminy, do your homework ahead of time and don't slack off. Job offers get rescinded for GPA changes of great magnitude.
It's true - they really do want you to do it all. But being able to show that you can is more impressive than you realize, even if it seems miserable while you're in the midst of it.
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