Today’s job market is nothing short of brutal. There was a time when holding an undergraduate degree, regardless of where it was from, almost guaranteed you a job after graduation. That is no longer the case. Between intense competition, hiring slowdowns, and entry-level roles demanding three to five years of experience, the landscape feels unforgiving.

As an international student on an F1 visa, counting down the days to my OPT start date was one of the most stress-inducing periods of my life in the U.S. The pressure was real. My ability to stay in the country depended on securing employment.

So I applied everywhere. I kept a detailed Excel sheet tracking where I applied, when, which version of my resume I used, and whether I included a cover letter. In a market dominated by ATS systems filtering hundreds, sometimes thousands, of resumes, getting noticed can feel like playing the lottery. You tailor your resume just enough while submitting your name as many times as possible, hoping it lands somewhere.

I had been applying to internships and part-time jobs throughout college, and I began applying to full-time roles about five months before graduation. On average, I submitted three to five applications a day. Some weeks less, some weeks more. Many days I genuinely doubted whether I would secure employment for the duration of my OPT.

Eventually, I was offered a full-time role as a Marketing Coordinator at a small real estate firm.

Accepting it was bittersweet.

For years, I had intentionally built my resume with the hope of breaking into the entertainment industry. Living in Los Angeles, I quickly realized that entertainment is one of the most competitive industries to enter. After years of applying, even just for internships, I understood that I needed to expand my scope. I started applying to roles where my skills were transferable, telling myself that experience anywhere was still experience.

When this firm reached out almost immediately after I applied, it felt like a door was opened. The hiring manager contacted me the next day after I had applied and we scheduled an interview shortly after. The office was clean and polished. She was punctual, professional. Everything looked promising.

Then we started talking about goals.

At the time, one of my personal goals was simple: I wanted to buy a car. I had been in the U.S. for seven years without one. That was my reality: public transport, Ubers, rides from friends. Just making it work. When I shared that, she proudly explained how, after a few years at the company, she had been able to get her “dream car” with help from the director as a reward for her hard work.

I smiled. I nodded. I acted impressed.

Internally, though, something didn’t sit right.

It felt performative. Transactional. Almost like she was dangling a prize in front of me. Work hard enough, stay loyal enough, and maybe you too will be rewarded with something shiny. I quickly realized that material incentives were central to the work culture at this place. The values felt heavily tied to money, status, commission.

I left that interview knowing that I might not be happy there.

I accepted the offer anyway.

When you’re on a visa, alignment isn’t always the priority. Stability is. And part of me believed that if I worked hard enough, I could make it work.

That belief, that effort can compensate for misalignment, was the beginning of my burnout.

The role quickly expanded beyond the title.

On paper, I was a Marketing Coordinator. In reality, I became the operational support system for more than 20 agents. I created proposals, first appointment packages, and rent surveys in a software that had its own learning curve. I designed social media graphics in Photoshop, wrote captions, managed email blasts, uploaded listings to 3rd party sites. I designed and ordered postcards, banners, and signage. I manually edited proposal documents in Adobe Acrobat because the templates weren’t optimized.

I had one week of training before being thrown into one of the busiest seasons of the year.

The workload alone was heavy. But what made it exhausting was the fragmentation, twenty agents, twenty preferences, twenty versions of “urgent.” Design expectations were high but there was no dedicated designer. Design is its own discipline. It wasn’t my strongest skill, yet it became one of the most scrutinized aspects of my performance.

There were internal policies meant to limit how much agents could request from marketing, but they hadn’t been consistently enforced before I arrived. Leadership made it clear that one of my main responsibilities would be to say “no.”

So I did.

The agents didn’t like it.

When you’re brought in to enforce boundaries in a system that has benefited from having none, you create friction. At first, leadership backed me. For a brief period, I felt supported. But as complaints grew louder, that support faded. Agents criticized my work. They highlighted mistakes.

And yes! I made mistakes.

How could I not? Managing deliverables for 20+ agents with imperfect systems and minimal support makes perfection unrealistic. But the focus slowly shifted from structural issues to personal shortcomings. Many of the complaints centered around design, as if I had been hired as a graphic designer rather than a marketing operations coordinator. If leadership truly understood the needs of their agents, they would have hired a designer from the beginning. Instead, the role was stretched to cover everything.

Burnout doesn’t arrive one day to the next. It builds quietly when expectations exceed infrastructure and accountability becomes one-sided.

After voicing my concerns, and learning that the previous marketing coordinator had also recommended hiring a second person for marketing needs, leadership began interviewing for another marketing position. Someone was eventually hired. They had stronger design skills than I did.

It still wasn’t enough.

Agents weren’t satisfied. Expectations kept expanding. Leadership began micro-managing our work, documenting everything. Meetings felt less like support and more like positioning. There was a sense that a paper trail was being built.

Eventually, it became clear that one of us would be let go. It was only a matter of who.

My co-worker was fired.

After that, the tone shifted further. Agents became sharper, more entitled. I started bracing before opening emails. Going into the office felt heavy, just draining. I could feel my confidence thinning. I knew I was capable, but I no longer felt valued.

And slowly, my performance began to reflect that. Not because I wasn’t competent, but because I was disengaging. It’s difficult to stay invested in work when you feel consistently undermined. The way I was being treated started to affect the way I showed up. I wasn’t proud of it, but I also couldn’t ignore it, I cared less. Less about perfecting deliverables. Less about pleasing agents who seemed impossible to satisfy. When respect erodes, effort eventually follows.

That is what sustained burnout feels like, it starts eating away at you internally.

The moment I realized growth wasn’t possible there, I began planning my exit. Quietly, consistently, I started applying again. Even on days when my energy was low. Even when my self-doubt was louder than usual. Eventually, at one of my lowest points, I received an interview from a company I had been applying to for years.

The process took months. Three interviews. Long pauses. Moments where I thought it wasn’t going to happen.

Then I received the offer.

Those final months at the firm were some of the hardest. My motivation was thin. My sense of self had taken hits. Friction with leadership continued. When I asked what I could do to feel more supported, I requested something simple: positive reinforcement.

The response was, “You’ll get your praises when you show you actually deserve them.”

That sentence crystallized everything.

On my last day, the director didn’t even care to properly say goodbye.

And somehow, that felt fitting.

Now I work somewhere different.

From the beginning, I felt trusted and respected. I didn’t have to fight for basic acknowledgment. Belief was extended to me, and because of that, I naturally want to perform better. Not out of fear or pressure. But out of alignment because I finally feel seen.

Burnout didn’t teach me how to hustle harder.

It taught me that your work is only as good as the environment it lives in.

It taught me that staying where you are undervalued will slowly distort how you see yourself. That constant criticism without affirmation erodes confidence in ways you don’t notice until you’ve already internalized it.

Most importantly, it taught me that boundaries aren’t just about saying no to extra tasks.

They’re about knowing when to stop offering yourself to spaces that don’t know how to hold you.

I am thankful for that job because it showed me what misalignment feels like and I don’t plan on mistaking it for growth again.

And now that I know better, I will choose differently.