1 perfect thank you note won't get you a job. 100 perfect thank you notes just might.

LIKE A MAJORITY OF FIRST-YEAR business school students, I'm in the middle of the summer internship search. I'm gunning for a job in consulting, and applications are due in a few weeks for the big firms. Like any other Type-A overachiever, I'm doing as much as I can to make sure that when I pull the lever on the big employment slot machine, I pull cherries or sevens and not... uh... you know, something that leaves me without job.

The hardest part about this whole job search thing is the fact that, ultimately, it's out of my hands.

This is hard for me to accept.

I don't do hard drugs. I don't gamble. I don't fall in love easily, as any number of ex-boyfriends can attest. Not because they're stupid things to do (which they are), but because they require you to surrender yourself to something else: a chemical, chance, or someone else's uncertain affection.

My father may be surprised to read about this need for control. I frequently leave on trips without a map, directions, or even a precise destination address. Yet I know that I can always call him and he'll tell me where I've managed to wind up, and how to get where I'm going, thereby providing the illusion of control. (All that said, I pray he's not actually reading this blog, as it occasionally acknowledges the existence of sex and that I have a semi-functional sex drive. Dad, if you're reading this, those things are lies. Also, Hillary made me do it).

I know that I'll eventually need to give up on this need, that being successful eventually becomes less about doing the right thing all the time, and more about leveraging a rare moment of possibility and otherwise rolling with the punches. It's hard to make that shift, though, when doing what I can to determine the outcome of uncertain periods has been relatively successful.

Here's hoping the illusion lasts a little longer.

Ida Maria - "Oh My God"

"You think I'm in control? Oh my God."