Being a student in UTCS sometimes feels like being at a giant, never-ending career fair. There’s a different company in the atrium almost every day, and it’s hard to walk through the lab and not hear anybody talking about the next interview they have.

While it’s great to have opportunities, I think that it’s also important to realize that this sort of environment isn’t normal, and it can have some strange effects on how we view ourselves.

Most evidently, we have to come up with some sort of personal brand to show to companies. "I’m ____, and I’m interested in ____. I have demonstrated this interest with ____,” is what we have to come up with in order to get anything across to companies besides, “I don’t really know what I want but thanks for the free pens and stuff.” I never would have tried to describe myself with two or three sentences before college, and I’m honestly not too crazy about the idea now.

Of course, our message varies depending on the company we’re talking to, or projects we’re currently working on, but when we start the habit of defining ourselves by just a few labels, we can start to have a pretty over-simplified view of who we are.

We have to remember that we’re not our resumes. Which I know is somewhat disappointing to some people, because life would be a lot easier if you could just “win” by adding a few bullet points to your resume.

We’re more accurately defined by the stories and experiences we have, though, and what we took from them even though this is a lot harder to talk to companies about.

But if you spend all of your time doing something impressive that makes you completely miserable, you’re doing something wrong. And honestly, if you dislike something that much, there’s going to be a limit on how much you can take anyways. If you learn how to make decisions based on a more complicated but honest view of yourself, it will be more fulfilling and likely more sustainable as well. I almost did something like this by going to a slightly more prestigious college than UT (and trying to convince myself that I liked it), but couldn’t do it when I was supposed to put down my admissions deposit. I’m really glad that I didn’t, because I’m much happier here, and I don't feel like I made a bad choice in the slightest.

Anyways, we’re logical people in this department, and tend to try to spend our time in a way that represents this. I just wanted to say that you’re already doing this if you’re here. We’re a top 10 school for CS, and as long as you’re putting a fair amount of work into your classes and stay interested in what you’re working on, you deserve to be congratulated. Not everybody seems to recognize this, but it’s possible literally for every single person here to be successful. We just have to stop defining success as a list of limited options.