Let Fate Take The Wheel: How To Deal When You've Done All You Can

In preparation for summer, everyone completing an undergraduate degree is scrambling for worthwhile employment (I am no different). The ultimate job would beef up my résumé, pay me for work and be in my area of interest.

If you are one of the lucky ones who have already secured one of these jobs, or if you’re reading from your high horse of a finished degree and permanent employment, let me just say, it is really difficult to find this kind of job.

You can do all the hard work possible, have four different internships during the school year and it will still be difficult to find the job right for you.

Here is what I would like to propose: patience.

Gen-Y desperately needs to find some patience. We are so used to having everything at our fingertips — the voices of our friends, the directions to the place we need to get to, a recipe or a song.

Take a chill pill; some things need time, and some need luck. The application process for a paid internship in a major city likely takes more than a couple of days to complete, and then it's out of your hands.

The truth is, the days of being at the top of your class (of 300 people) are no longer a reality. Accept that you have done your absolute best and then, let fate take the wheel.

This is something I know we all have trouble accepting because we have been the generation taught to fight tooth and nail for what we want.

With the world’s population growing at an exponential rate, we need to be pretty tough to get to the top. Don’t get me wrong; perseverance is a really amazing attribute but sometimes, it just is not enough.

Sometimes, you need to trust your skills, talents and intuition. Sometimes, you need to let these skills speak for you. And sometimes, unfortunately, you need to accept that things will be different than how you assumed they would go.

Even though this detour can seemingly derail your entire vision for your future, it will soon become clear to you that there are other things out there for you. Here’s another annoyingly accurate cliché for you: For every door that closes, another one opens.

We are a generation of control freaks, so I know it’s frustrating to hear that “everything happens for a reason,” but it is 110 percent true. If you are meant to get that “dream” job, you will get it. If you don’t, you probably weren’t meant for it.

Maybe rejection is fate’s way of guiding you toward where you are actually supposed to be.

Take a step back for a second and breathe. If you have pulled the all-nighters, scrambled to talk to the right people and have perfected your portfolio, there really is nothing left for you do.

Instill this patience deep within your soul and I promise you, nothing but good things will come of it.

With patience will come this incredible understanding of the amount of our control. In the age of technology, it seems like we, humans, can control an awful lot.

We can predict when and where storms will hit; we can build weapons of mass destruction and we can deploy them; we can even create human life without the traditional acts of conception.

It’s incredible where our knowledge has led us, but I think it limits our acceptance that there are many things on which we will never have all-knowing grasps.

Simply put: Learn to be easier on yourself. If you can honestly say to yourself that you have done everything in your power to your fullest ability, then that is all you can do.

You can’t control what other people will do, so why bother worrying about it? Learn the balance of perseverance and patience, and everything will seem a lot less difficult.