Who said the young can't be wise?

Ahoy fellow readers and brave internet dwellers!

I was at a soccer game today being a field marshal (I look at it as getting paid $10 an hour to finish up The Hobbit), and I ran into someone I went to grade school with! She's a grade below me and is a former classmate's cousin. But that's not entirely important, I guess?

The important thing is that she gave me PRICELESS advice (good word combo!) that I felt like I should be the one sharing with her, but as it turns out, she knew WAY more about life in general and stuff than I did. We got to talking about college and whatnot (I'm a junior, going to study abroad this fall) and when I asked her about what college she went to, she opened up her little brain-box of experiences and just let a wave of stories and advice wash over me, and to continue this very lame "oceanic" metaphor, I soaked it all up like a sponge. Whew. Glad that metaphor's over. I'm shore you bet this was totally on porpoise. Water you expecting, non-lame puns and metaphors? Shell I stop now? Ah... I need a life. You sea what I'm saying?

But I digress! (as usual) She was telling me about spending a semester at University of Missouri (she's a sophomore this year) and then spent the second semester interning at Disneyworld, and now she's transferring to UWM (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), and  has another intern in a local town here for the summer at an advertising agency and she's basically doing all the stuff I want to be doing, except... she's ACTUALLY DOING IT. I would love to be editing and doing social media and living in Florida for several months, but I just never apply to internships!

So even though I got advice from my older brother about my major and how it's useless, her advice taught me so much more: GET EXPERIENCE. And my newspaper editing teacher told me the same thing! Don't worry too much about your degree; instead, focus on learning as much as you can and garnering experience. That's really the more important thing. Now, this is not to say to just blow off studying and stuff, because grades still matter, but also focus on exploring the field you want to make your career.

So, three things to learn from this: 1) Listen to everyone, even those younger than you, because you can actually learn a lot if you just keep your ears open. Also, some people have some really interesting life stories. 2) Don't worry so much about stuff! You may see all these people on a different track than you, but everyone has different majors, backgrounds, goals etc and you may not be cut out for those other tracks. I know I am the last person to advise you on not worrying, because as anyone I know could tell you, I worry about waaaay too much stuff and I need to calm down, but I'm working on practicing that advice too. And 3) Apply for a ton of internships. Be creative with your Google searches (for instance, I am way too unoriginal and not clever to think of those ocean puns. I Googled sea puns!)

"I Googled drug dealer, but this is just as good of a job, I guess. More job security, literally."
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But on a more serious note, search for local and out of state internships using creative Google search terms. Don't limit yourself to major corporations! Talk up your experience and lessons you learned from previous jobs and classes you've taken! Network! I hate networking. But I guess it helps. I guess.

Anyway, that's the end of this little spiel. Now, excuse me while I Google customer service representative NOT from Hell. I have some business to attend to.