There are two things that can eat you alive and mess with your self-esteem more than anything else, being cheated on and working in a bad internship. If you think about it, the two are very similar. Being cheated on is shocking, hurtful, and scary that the person you love would ever hurt you and stab you in the back in such an intimate way. Working in a bad internship can be the same. You spend years thinking about your dream career and what that might be until you get a chance and it is the opposite of everything you have imagined. The daunting and questioning thoughts of “why isn’t this working out?” or “why do I not love this?” ponder in your mind similar to the coping in discovering you’ve been cheated on.
It’s not all that bad though. Bad internships, as does cheating, teaches you everything you need to know for your future. You learn what you don’t want in your life. For example, one of the things I learned in my relationship is that I don’t want a guy that can’t keep it in his pants for two weeks until I see him. Or, in my internship, I learned that event planning isn’t all glamour and fun, but actually a lot of tedious work that necessarily is not my passion. I learned so much from being cheated on and working in an internship that wasn’t my favorite. I know exactly what I don’t want. The lessons you learn from these two experiences are priceless.
Being cheated on was the biggest blessing in my life. It made me open my eyes to why the boy I was with was not the man for me. Yes, there is a difference. There are boys and there are men. Men are loyal. Men are confident, but they treat their loved ones with respect and equality. An internship that you hate teaches you to fight for your dreams and passions. Finding your purpose and doing something you love will never feel like work, you will never call it a job. Finding a man that treats your relationship as 50/50 is an internship you want to take. Loving your job is never work and becomes your ultimate passion, and maybe getting the dream you have always wanted. No matter how bad it seems at 21, trust me, it gets so much better.