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Abdulbasid Guled
Abdulbasid Guled

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How the covid-19 pandemic will define what is otherwise, a really bad moment

My grades are out. They're really good. Considering I took way too many classes than I really needed to, I'm happy with my results overall. So what's with the title?

Well, this summer is supposed to be an internship moment for myself and many others in my position. We should be gaining valuable experience in the industry. This is mostly to learn and to grow, even if it's a requirement for us to graduate. For many like me, however, graduation may not ever happen.

The covid-19 has hit every person in the world hard, especially the young folks. Businesses especially are having to make very tough decisions. I don't envy the business owners that have had to cut costs by laying off employees, but they should at least be aware of the consequences that will have. In my attempts to search for a co-op opportunity, I have applied to over 50+ jobs, both on my job board that my school has, and on other external sites such as linkedin, indeed, talent.com, and etc. I have only received 2 interviews. The first 1 rejected me after about 2 weeks. The second one is a pending rejection at this point, because internships start on May 3rd, and I don't anticipate an offer on the weekend. For students like us, it's very depressing. I know so many individuals that are uniquely qualified, and yet, aren't ever given a chance to shine. I don't want to be doing a minimum wage job for the rest of my life. That's why I came back to school in the first place. The reality is that this pandemic may not even end, anytime soon.

Although vaccines are starting to ramp up, the damage that has been done to the economy will be ever-lasting. I'm now left to ponder what to do next. I'm almost finished school at this point, but the amount of companies that have not said a word to me is astonishing. Consider this:

Rejection

I don't want to show my resume, but I highlighted my skills in web-development as well as what I've done in the past 2+ years. Yet, that still is not enough.

Or even this:

Ridiculous offer
This is a junior data scientist co-op job, and needs 1 co-op under their belt. I look at jobs like this and just get demoralized.

At this point, I don't even know what to do. I'll more than likely have to exercise the exempt option to have this co-op not count towards graduation, but that just means that those that were quite literally lucky enough to get a co-op will be more valuable due to their experience as opposed to someone in my shoes.

More scary, however, is that I still am required to have at least 1 co-op under my belt. How is this even possible when most companies aren't willing to take a chance at people like us? All this does is push my graduation date further, and I'm not getting younger. I want experience, a chance to grow. Telescope was exactly that chance. Now, I want to know if anyone else out there in the world would be willing to do the same

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