job app weariness
I applied to Tiktok and several other companies for Summer 2025 Internships. Every application is similar. It started to feel dreary after a while. I feel like I am doing it just to get it done. I don't feel excited about the role, just very worried. The anxiety is that I don't know if I am good enough, or if it is a waste of time applying at all. I know what I am looking for: time and experience building something with the computer. I'm afraid because I feel like I have to be something more than what I am currently, but I don't know what that something is.
Maybe I just need to allow myself to explore more. I want to know what C++ is good for, what to love and hate about it, how different it is from Java with its libraries, keywords, OOP design choices (multiple inheritance skull emoji). I want to learn why people invented so many different technologies, and what better way to learn than simply using them and seeing what they are good for?
School provides some opportunities for that, although not a lot. Much of the time is still sitting at lectures trying to learn stuff that will only be applied or tested on much later.
Why did I pick computer science for my major? I like thinking and analyzing things. Looking at some topic from a lot of angles. I like making things. Isn't it amazing to see my task popping up on that website after I click add and enter the information? A lot of things about computers have been taken for granted. It is not unlike making art. The process of coding taught me how hard it is to make possible the stuff that I take for granted. But also how rewarding and empowering it is. I can make a website now! It takes a lot of effort and time. But I can do it. In fact, I did. Now I know I can use other people's code (UI libraries yay!) to make beautiful buttons and alerts. I can handle events using functions binded to UI components. I can deploy to Vercel from my Github repo! I can use Prisma singleton objects to manage connections and APIs to the database with Typescript, the same language I use for the front end, in the familiar OOP syntax.
Most importantly, I know I can learn. These tools, I learned them in a month while bringing my app to life. I like the comfort of knowing that they are puzzle pieces that fit together in creative ways, and no matter how confusing it might look at a glace, I can use them to build things with careful examinations, trials and errors. I learned what each tool allow me to do, then I apply those tools to solve problems. It is a process that is both challenging and rewarding.
Recently, I've gotten an interest in system programming and devops stuff. I believe it stems from a desire for a sense of security and ownership of my product. Vue, Prisma ORM, HeedlessUI are wonderful tools, without them, I will need to know much more and write much more code for my website to be completed. But I lack that sense of complete control over my creation. If one day, something in one of those tool breaks, I have code that no longer produces a beautiful, interactive webpage, and become just a big long plain text file. I want to know the computer enough so that I can be confident that my app is an app that runs, and I can take care of the gazillion things going on under the hood to make it run. It will takes a lot of time. These tools were not built in a day by one person. But I want to know the computer even more intimately. That's why OS is such an interesting topic. It let me dive into that deeper layer that sits between me - the programmer, the user code, and my computer, the hardware. Things start to make sense, and don't at the same time. It is a fun space and I am eager to learn.
If no place decides to have me next summer, that learning can still occur. I will need to work some job to have a roof above my head and money for groceries, but I'll have some time to learn what I want to learn. Worst case scenario doesn't seem so bad after all.