LEGENDARY LOVERS

Naya had a spreadsheet. Column A: Company Name. Column B: Date Applied. Column C: Status. Column D: Notes. Column C was mostly red. Rejected. Rejected. No response. Position filled. It was March 14th 2026 . 11:47pm. Her final semester at NYU. Computer Science. GPA 3.6. Not bad. Not the 4.0 her roommate Seli had. Not the kind of number that got you recruited at career fairs. Her laptop burned her thighs , creating a red blemish on her skin . She shifted and kept scrolling. One more, she told herself. Just one more before sleep. Seli was already in bed, buried under a weighted blanket, scrolling t****k with the sound off. Naya, you’re gonna fry your brain, Seli mumbled. It’s almost midnight. I know, Naya said. This is the last one. It was always the last one. She opened LinkedIn and typed in the search bar. Intern. Software. New York. 2000+ results. Most of them unpaid. Most of them asking for 2 years experience for an entry-level role. Then she saw it. Riaxx Lamps Tech — Software Engineering Intern 3 months. Paid. Manhattan, 42nd Floor. Hybrid. Riaxx lamps Tech. She knew the name. Everyone in CS did. Zyane Roberto lamps . Built the company in his dorm at 18 . Now it was worth billions of dollars . Fintech, logistics, AI. The guy was on magazine covers , newspapers and news headlines. Requirements: Proficiency in Python, SQL, React. Experience with APIs preferred. Familiarity with cloud infrastructure a plus. Naya checked her mental list. Python, yes. SQL, yes. React, she had built 2 projects in it last semester. APIs, her weather app pulled from 3 of them. Cloud, she had deployed on AWS for a class. She also had no referral. No alumni connection. No “my cousin works there.” Just her GitHub. 3 projects. 127 commits. Clean README files. A budget tracker she built for her mom to use. A library management system for her old high school. A weather app that didn’t crash every time you typed in a city. She opened a new tab. Cover letter. She hated cover letters. “I am a passionate self-starter.” “I thrive in fast-paced environments.” It all sounded fake. She typed for 20 minutes and deleted 3 times. Finally she wrote: Hi, I’m Naya Rose Chen. I’m a senior at NYU studying Computer Science. I like solving problems, writing clean code and dealing with technology. Here is my GitHub: Thank you for your time. - Naya[link] Short. No fluff. If they wanted more, they could look at her code. She hovered over the submit button. Her chest felt tight. Seli rolled over. You’re doing Riax Lamps Tech? They get like 8000 applications. The competition is high. I know, Naya said. You’re going to get rejected and you’ll be sad for 5 days and eat ice cream and chips. I won’t eat ice cream and chips , Naya lied. She clicked submit. Status: Applied. She exhaled. On her wall above her desk was a sticky note in her own handwriting: Finish strong. Get experience. Get out. She didn’t want to be famous. She didn’t want to work 80 hour weeks. She didn’t want a CEO to notice her. She just wanted one yes. One company to say: we see you. She closed her laptop. 12 tabs. All job postings. All probably going to be red in Column C. She set her phone to silent mode and lay down. Outside, a siren went past. New York never got quiet. She fell asleep thinking about databases , her future and if she'll finally be accepted. All this was taking a toll on her mental health. She just needed to accept her , to see her .