-I kind of saw it coming. I wasn't really surprised.
-I've been applying to jobs currently,
but I think everybody is still kind of in that
"We're not really trying to move,
and we don't necessarily want to set interviews."
-I definitely don't think that any of us,
speaking for college seniors, ever thought that we would be
in a situation, even a couple months ago,
when it's supposed to be the greatest time of our lives.
-Not knowing when my career will start or
if my career will be able to start in the near future
has been, like, really stressful.
-I see any internship as being important to me,
but I saw this internship as being
"Okay, this is a step in the door.
Even though it's just an internship,
I can make this my career."
Well, I found APCO through LinkedIn,
and I was hoping to do something with communications
and not even just communications.
I was hoping to get a chance to see what marketing is like,
maybe PR.
That company is so big, I was hoping
that I could just kind of branch everywhere in there,
so that way I can see what exactly it is that I want to do.
Well, when I received the opportunity,
I was really excited.
Once I received a letter saying
the opportunity is no longer available
due to the virus, it kind of made me feel like, "What now?"
You know?
I don't know what exactly my plans are gonna be now,
but I just kind of feel lost right now
and not in a position where I want to be,
because this is not what I worked to do
for four years in school.
And now I feel like I'm stuck.
-Early February, I got a job offer at a pretty large bank
doing private wealth management to stay in DC.
And so, ultimately, like, it was a very tough decision,
but I decided I was not gonna take the job,
and I was gonna push the New York jobs.
What ended up happening, unfortunately,
you know, I turned down the job,
and it was, like, two weeks later,
the first case of COVID was in the US.
And then fast-forward, you know, now a couple weeks later,
the trail has gone cold on
about four different opportunities I had.
Just obviously, you know, I don't want to be
graduated from college,
and I feel like the further you get out from graduation,
the harder it is to get a job.
-I feel definitely pretty crushed about the fact
that I might not be able to get a job.
I'm currently planning to go into the entertainment industry,
either on the talent side or the business side.
And a lot of times, in order to sort of
get started in that industry,
you have to go out to the area, whether it's to New York or LA.
I'm from Houston, Texas,
and because of the whole quarantine thing,
I can't just move out there.
-I was looking specifically to intern in London this summer.
So, for the internship I was doing,
I was working through a study-abroad program
through the Ralph Bunche Center at Howard.
So, taking the experience that I've had,
like, as a performer and being able to translate
that into putting on a show,
whether that's as a stage manager,
a producer, a director.
I was super-excited.
I wanted to study abroad my entire --
honestly, like, since high school.
I knew that when I got to college,
I wanted to study abroad.
I found out that it was going to be canceled, like,
right before spring break started.
I was really sad because I had I guess mistakenly waited
until, like, the final summer
that I would have during my college experience
to be able to study abroad.
And so, I definitely feel like I missed out on an opportunity,
kind of like kicking myself that I didn't do it any sooner
or that I wasn't able to do it any sooner.
I didn't really have time to be super-upset about it
because there were so many other things going on with corona
and at school and making sure that everyone was safe.
So, I guess that's kind of a blessing
I didn't have too much time to kind of sit around
and be sad about it.
So, now I'm just, you know, looking for the next thing.
-I've been trying to find jobs that are listed as,
like, newly posted because that probably means
that they really need someone to go and work for them.
Like, I know that there were some jobs
with political campaigns, like,
on the media-advertising side of that,
which is sort of like what I want to do.
So, I've been trying to apply for jobs like that
because I know that they'll still need people
because, like, we're still gonna have political elections.
-I'm applying for internships.
I'm applying for jobs.
I'm just applying, like, for everything, honestly.
-I am still a little bit nervous for what the future holds,
just because, I mean, at this point, we don't even know --
we don't know how the summer's going to end,
let alone, like, what the fall semester's going to bring,
if we'll be back for fall semester.
-I am definitely not getting the amount of responses
that I had, you know, let's say in, like, January, February.
I'm very hopeful that I'll be able to find a job
within the next couple months.
I think that, you know, I wouldn't be terribly shocked
if I was still sitting here
without a job in November or January.
-My plan "C" would be that I would end up moving back home
until, you know, I can get my footing again up here.