68
votes
What’s an unrealistic expectation you feel pressured to meet?
Anything goes. This can be in your job, in an interpersonal relationship, a societal pressure, or something else entirely. It can be something significant or something minor. It can be something externally applied to you, or a pressure you put on yourself.
- What is the unrealistic expectation?
- What makes it so unrealistic?
- Who/what is applying the pressure?
- Is this expectation specific to you, or does it apply to a larger group/role/identity?
- Why do you think the pressure exists in the first place?
- What could be done (if anything) to change the expectation?
To be the perfect mother and wife while also making time for my own interests, staying fit (and slim! Don’t forget that part!), maintaining a social life and keeping a tidy and clean home. And I don’t even have a career to add to that list, which so many others do.
It’s unrealistic because there just aren’t enough hours in the day. We’ve lost our village when it comes to child-raising, and this leaves very little time outside of looking after children for anything else.
It’s hard to say who’s putting this pressure on. Myself, certainly; society, to an extent. Other women? Perhaps. Not my husband, which I’m eternally grateful for - he doesn’t have any expectations of me, reasonable or otherwise, except to do what makes me happy.
I think most women in the (western ?) world would resonate with some or all of this, so it’s widespread!
Why does the pressure exist? Gosh, who knows. Patriarchy? Capitalism? My own innate need for acceptance and love which I think I will get by being perfect? Hard to say. Some combination, I suppose.
As for what could be done to ease the pressure, I think on a personal level: therapy (ain’t that always the answer?!). On a societal level I think we’re heading in the right direction - it’s by no means perfect, yet, but fathers are much more involved than they’ve ever been before and workplaces are starting to accept that men are involved in their children’s lives and might need time off occasionally to care for them (this is certainly not widespread, but more common than even 20 years ago).
I’m English living in Australia, so anything I say about society is through that lens!
I could have written this (with less clarity and effectiveness).
I think there's been a scope creep for the already full-time job of being women. Like you said there's no more village and now we work full time on child care and/or job, but we're still supposed to be "presentable". More than that: keep our homes and family presentable. More presentable than before.
Ive been a house guest to Older folks homes where I get a bed and some folded sheets in the cupboard somewhere. It's cool I can figured it out and it was always very nice.
I've also been a house guest where my Younger host made it look fancier than an open house or cruise trip. It was Instagram fancy. That's way too much work for my younger host and i felt so bad that she would have felt this much pressure and take so much of her time! The kicker is that I was visiting her husband, not primarily her, and yet her husband didn't feel the need to go to that length because he's right: I ain't there to judge them (he knows I'm messy lol) I'm there to hang out with them. But would I have judged her, if the house wasn't hotel clean? I guess she had some doubts as to what I am like, or perhaps she was just brought up in homes with higher standards.....the kicker is now he's visiting soon and I feel a lot of burning anxiety to clean up to that extent too.
If a couple gets visitors and the home isn't spotless, it's the woman that will be judged. If a kid goes to school with dirty clothes it's the moms fault. If a husband is eating cup ramen at work then we judge that the woman is a bad cook or even wife. If a kid turns out to be a serial killer it's because the mom didn't provide a good home or some girl did them wrong. If a woman isn't paid as much as her peers that's her fault for not negotiating more --- you know, to be honest I don't know when was the last time I actually has someone said anything like this to my face. Maybe we've progressed enough that would be judges feel too ashamed to bring it up or even gossip to others about us. Maybe we grew up with so much of this that even though when we look around the world has changed, our inner dialogue has not yet gotten the update patch of safety.
In the words of Christ, "Woman, where are they who accuse you? Has no one condemned you?"
Maybe no one is expecting this of us anymore, and I am the only one keeping "but what would the Jones think" alive not only for myself but for my children....
This is just what I was thinking about when I said “other women” putting pressure on us - not really that other women judge us, but that we worry they will, and so we try to raise ourselves to this impossible standard.
Your last paragraph made me laugh a bit because I’ve thought the same - has it become this weird cycle now?! Perhaps our children will be the ones to break it. I hope so
I think that worrying about others....is one of those invisible emotional load that we've been trained as women to take on as if our lives depended on it. Because not even that long ago, and in places even today, our lives DO depend on it.
We were taught before we hit puberty that if we dress or talk or walk or befriend or exist in a certain way, we will be raped and/or murdered, and no one will believe or fight for us or avenge us because we dropped the ball on how others perceive us. That it is literally survival instinct for us to monitor and control the narrative of how everyone feels about us.
Are we projecting middle class put together -ness? Or are we perceived as slovenly and rightful target for violence or demeaning?
The created myth of the welfare queen: that women sit on our butts and demand the world support us, had been so damaging.....
we can unfortunately even see it in this thread.Collectively we have such a low view of children, of human beings who have children, that what ought to be one of the most honoured things humans can do is perceived as ripe and open target for humiliattion and shame. "It's not even a real job try having a real job like me, that'll give you something to cry about" -- this is the kind of violence that weight us down.
I've done stay at home parenting and I've worked full time. I can work three full time jobs, easily, with far less stress, than being a SAHP.
This is all just SO well said and so relevant and important. I have nothing to add because I think this says it all! Thank you
I've been befriending people who also like me have been trying to "descope". There's a certain recognition among us that our collective competition to acquire and uphold status and reputation drives high expectations of ourselves and others. It drives burnout and overconsumption. So, we try to expect less and learn to be more content with less. One friend, a Princeton graduate gave up his lucrative but empty career in M&A to pursue studies to become a therapist and help others. We keep our homes rather unpretentious and a little messy for each other.
I often think of Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In that really set the tone for professional women in America. I think she's very genuine in her desire to help women navigate an unideal world as best as they can. But still, when I read it, there was a strong underlying message, "I'm a business-family-philanthropic superwoman and you can be too if you manage your life right," with a subtle implication that "if you can't or don't want to, then what's wrong with you?" I believe that the only true path to contentment is leaning out, not leaning even harder into the game. For everyone.
Your comment reminds me of a song I recently heard: The Daughters
It is country-ish and has a religious bent, but even setting those aside, the sentiment seems very much in line.
Not my kind of music but the message certainly resonates! Thanks for sharing.
This is a really rude way to respond to someone discussing all the pressures that overwhelm them. The phrase "the things you feel are too much" is particularly nasty. While being able to afford to have a full-time stay-at-home parent is a privilege in this economy, it's absolutely uncalled for to act like the struggles and pressures of a woman in that situation are less legitimate and a "luxury" compared to those you face, especially when you haven't experienced it yourself.
Also, "Everyone has these pressures" is obviously untrue -- obviously someone without kids doesn't have that subset of them, for instance, and the pressures around maintaining order in the home are VERY different in magnitude between men and women, even ignoring the stay-at-home mom aspect.
This comment's not just "harsh", it's defeating the purpose of this thread to delegitimize the pressures others face by minimizing them in comparison to your own. It's being an asshole, imo.
Also, part of the reason she feels the pressure is explicitly because of comments like that, from people who assume she has it easier. She states her awareness of that unfortunate fact when she says she "doesn't even have a career, like so many others do."
It's honestly some barely-disguised sexist bullshit to assume that a stay-at-home mom with kids "has it easy" or is cruising through life. I don't have kids myself but even a tiny bit of experience babysitting a young child for more than a couple hours would make it clear how much work goes into just that part of it. It's supreme arrogance to assume your job must be harder than that. Mine certainly isn't.
I knew there are people who underestimate the amount of work that a stay-at-home mom has, but I honestly didn't expect them to be on tildes. Or at least to have the good sense not to comment deliberately to demean them.
So there's this ideal that I think you're missing for discussion; it's important here on Tildes, and would be nice to see everywhere else, but it's really important here if you want to "fit in" here. The most important thing to do is to remember that there's an actual human on the other side of a conversation, and that they are sharing something that is real and true for them. In this instance, the question is "what's an unrealistic expectation" and @AgnesNutter answered with something that is perfectly true, and at no point in her answer did she say that she had it worse than someone else. Also at no point was the question, "what is worse for you than for other people?"
From a third party, what this conversation looks like is this:
I want to be clear - I am not saying that you yourself are a misogynist, but this is a thing that is often repeated online and is misogynist; I'll mention briefly that this is one of the insidious ways that any hate-based ideologies gain traction, which is by saying something that is generally true - in this specific case, the pressures that Agnes is discussing are not the worst pressures that humans can feel - and injecting it in a way that undermines the discussion at hand. Again, I am not accusing you of being a misogynist, but I want you to ask yourself, "do I want to say things that make people think I might be a misogynist?"
If your first reaction on reading what Agnes wrote was "I have things so much worse" (or even "others have things worse") then I would recommend some real introspection, because that is not a good path to be on. When someone else shares something in a thread like this one, I think it is really important to not crap on their answers, and it can be really hard to reign in the desire to do so these days, especially after so many years of antagonism on various websites. These conversations aren't a battleground, they are a discussion. These aren't zero-sum games, where if one person is "winning" you are "losing" - we can all win and be better for listening. You don't have to put down Agnes' experience in any way to have an interaction here; that shouldn't happen.
And you need to learn a skill called "empathy" and realize now is not the time or place to express that perspective. This is a thread for people to unload and be vulnerable without judgment and here you are being judgmental.
I won’t apologise for not pandering to you. I’m not part of any other group so I can’t presume to speak about struggles that aren’t mine. These are the pressures I face. I don’t think I said they were worse than anyone else’s. I’m not going to justify myself to you, but suffice to say it isn’t all luxury that led to me being a stay at home parent. There’s no need to be aggro at people who you know nothing about
Saying "I don't mean to sound harsh" doesn't make the harsh things you say less harsh. This is a thread where we're being vulnerable and you're in here one-upping and being condescending to someone who's sharing their insecurities? Rude.
Have you ever been a stay at home parent, especially one with young children? Because your replies smack of someone who has no idea what it's like. I've done both and by far my job is easier. Looking after kids is a 24/7 job. You don't get to clock out and "go home" at the end of the day, you're always on call. If your kids are young enough they will require -constant- attention, you're practically on suicide watch a lot of that time. Want to grab a coffee or take a pee break? Tough luck, you look away for 5 seconds and your kid's either already hurt themselves or ruined something in the house. Good luck keeping the house clean and make meals at the same time.
And frankly just because -you- have big problems doesn't mean others' are objectively insignificant. Even people with all the money, time and means in the world commit suicide. Good for you if you're somehow stronger than everyone else at dealing with big problems. Basic empathy costs nothing, "reminding people of how good they have it" is of no help at all for people who are struggling.
Empathy for ones feelings is important.
Please learn that
There's a lot of pressure on employees to spend 100% (and preferably more) of the time they're paid for at work being 100% (again, preferably more) productive and generating revenue for their company. They're not paying us to sit around after all! If they could calculate the loss of productivity caused by blinking and thus not being FULLY engaged in work duties they probably would, and they'd dock our pay for it too...
What could be done about it? Not sure - seems treating workers like humans and not appliances seems like it would be enough, but yet it's rarer that I'd like...
Yeah and it's one of those unspoken things that nobody is that productive and a lot of our time is just kind of wasted at work. I hope for future generations' sake, they develop shorter work schedules because we just don't need to spend that much time in the office.
Mine is the unspoken rule of "If the works not done in 40 hours, guess who's working late?"
I work in senior leadership in data. I get paid well. But my boss will be available all hours, via email, Teams and Slack and expects that of others despite it being contrary to the culture of the business we work in.
I refuse to do this, but that pressure is always there due to him blocking huge swathes of time with meetings and just... Talking, but saying very little.
That expectation of your time to fulfill someone else's egotistical needs to flex their own power is disastrous and indicative of people who have failed to launch a life of their own outside of work. But daring to do otherwise (How dare you have hobbies) feels like you get pressured to drop them in favour of work.
I'm leaving my megacorp next Tuesday. Looking forward to joining a small team again. When there's only 20 people there's nothing to hide behind. So either it's all bullshit (easy to tell before joining) or there's almost no bullshit.
I've literally been offered a job at a new place last week, just getting references sorted now (not easy when you've got a startup background) and it's my last office job.
By the end of next year I'll be a qualified counsellor, so I'm moving that way. All the nonsense politics and egos are tiring and boring now.
Grats on the new job bud
This is one of several things keeping me away from applying elsewhere. My employer follows a different approach. They pay us for getting the job done. The bosses check if this is achieved, and they also set the guidelines. As long as this is met, our bosses don't give a damn how we do it. "You guys are too expensive for a babysitter" as one of them coined it.
In the end, I think that without this feeling of being permanently watched I am far more productive. They trust me, I trust them. With 20+ years in the company, I think both sides can say they know each other good enough. And the coworkers who misuse this trust are sorted out very quickly.
Totally agree with this. I've also been with the same company for 13 years, and have never been questioned on how I spend my day. They ask me to do a job, I do the job and they pay me. We don't have any bullshit productivity tracking software on our laptops, nobody is checking up on anyone to see if they're at their desk or working certain hours. And it's pretty easy to tell when someone consistently isn't pulling their weight on the team without having to deal with silly systems to quantify or put some kind of number on it. Our management is very, very good at identifying those people and getting them out.
Sometimes, we go through a spell where we're working longer days to meet a deadline. And once that's done, we just take some extra time off. Emergency happening at home? Family member dies? You're given unlimited time to deal with those things.
I wouldn't accept a 10-20% pay increase to go somewhere else and be micromanaged or judged on how much time I spend working instead of what I'm delivering. It just wouldn't be worth the headache or stress, or the feeling of someone looking over my shoulder.
This. I am going through a tragedy (talked about it extensively on Tildes), and my employer supports me amazingly. One year later the rule is still "You work as you can, and if you can't no problem". They pay me as if I work 100%, although I'm still at 90% maximum (and maybe I'll never reach my old self again), and they keep encouraging me that it doesn't matter, as my own health comes first for them. And this isn't just a phrase. Like I didn't take part in meetings for a year - no problem! Then I took part in two-three meetings before I realized this was too much - no problem, someone else replaced me.
Or an authority (responsible for the victim's pension I applied in context with the tragedy) recently suggested if it might help my mental health if I switched my position within the company or do something else entirely, as my current position is seen as very stressful for others. I told them I don't want to, given the stress level is acceptable and I'm very experienced, while doing something new would force me to learn many things while still fighting my issues. I told my coworkers and my boss about this suggestion and even before I could say that I declined they all reacted like "don't do that, don't leave!". My coworkers told me they absolutely don't mind the extra work (they see it as very little additional work, and they tell me I help them out with my experience in turn) and assured me that they will forever continue to help, while my boss told me that 90%-me is still doing more work than 100%-someone else.
That's something you can't compensate with money.
Your and my experience with our employers seems to be the exception. I wish more companies treated their employees with respect and dignity. Ours does, and that's why our retention rate is so high (less than 5% voluntary attrition). Given the cost to recruit, hire and train, I don't understand why so many companies choose to make an environment that's inhospitable to their employees.
In our place, most new employees have a rough start. The stress level is rather high, and you have much to learn and need guidance for quite some time. With prior experience it takes about 1 - 1.5 years if you can work on your own most of the time, without 1.5 - 2 years. This doesn't mean you're an expert after that time, far from it, you'll ask questions forever. In turn, the employer and the team is great.
I always compare new coworkers to turtle babies: After 2 years, 80% are gone. But the rest stays forever. With my twentysomething years working for them I'm rather the rule than the exception.
Unions, unions, unions, and oh yeah, collective bargaining. Large institutions have taken advantage of their workers since time immemorial, and seems like the only thing that gets them to not treat people like plump fruits waiting to be squeezed dry is when a critical number of those workers (preferably all of them) say "hey we're not working any more until you stop doing X".
Well that's in theory, at least. In practice, the game is rigged heavily on the side of the institutions.
How come you’re parents are so concerned with your financial situation? Is it that dire? Do they know that your work is your vision of a real job? Or is their concern legit and are you in denial? Just some questions your post made me think about.
I wouldn't call it unreasonable for your parents to expect you to find a job that allows you to support yourself independently. It might not be easy, and it might not be a job you like, but it's not unreasonable.
I parsed this differently from what you and @AspiringAlienist seem to have:
I don't think @JasonKinkade is saying that his social work and teaching is a job that other people have to subsidize, it's that their parents see it as a job that other people have to subsidize.
I identify with that; for a long time, my in-laws felt like my wife and I were not doing well, because we lived in bungalow, and they felt like they had to buy clothes, food, etc. for our kids. Even though they were well meaning, it was occasionally a bit demeaning that they felt like we weren't providing enough.
I guess the charitable way to frame this is that they believe in you more than you believe in yourself.
That said, I feel like my parents have always had higher expectations for me than I felt like I could live up to. Looking back, maybe sometimes it helped, maybe sometimes actually was able to do more than I thought I could, but I often did not, and it's not fun to feel that kind of pressure.
I am trying to find a job after a year hiatus. It isn't going well. I have around a decade of IT experience, but i can't seem to get the right people to notice me.
Last year, I came out at work, then I was injured & had to take off five days, then lost a parent a month later. I lost my job about six weeks after. It wasn't really a surprise, but I'm not sure how a person is supposed to keep their life in order while they grieve. After that, i lost a grandparent on the same side of my family, so my mom lost her spouse, then her father.
My wife also came out last year and transitioned, which is ultimately wonderful but hella stressful. It's also fucking miserable to try to convince family that you still love your spouse as another gender without feeling like youre adding to their pain of being widowed.
I just feel.. performative. I care about my wife not getting assaulted for going to the bathroom, i care about the climate collapsing, i care about my family healing. I'm autistic and i think I'm just failing at pretending.
The truth is, i feel actively hostile to the corporate machine I'm currently trying to join. Commuting is a pointless drain on resources, companies are destroying the planet, and lobbyists contribute to making my wife a scapegoat for assholes. I hate billionaires, i hate bootlicking, i hate capitalism.
I don't know how to survive in America anymore, i guess. I feel unwanted here, and I don't want to keep begging for a seat at the table that no one wants to give me.
What you describe, about feeling like you're sick of pretending and feeling actively hostile toward the corporate machine while simultaneously trying to find a job? It reminds me a ton of my wife (who's also autistic and incidentally happens to be trans) a few months ago while she was job hunting. Some of the things she said to me at the time echo what you say here almost exactly. I think the inauthentic persona that you have to put on while job hunting is really difficult for autistic folks, especially when sustained over a period of job-hunting.
I felt very similar about America before I left five years ago, and I honestly can't say I've felt any better about it since. I don't think I'm the person to give advice as a result, unless you want to move abroad (Microsoft is hiring for their data centers in Berlin rn fwiw 👀). Even if abandoning America is a practical choice, though, I don't think it gets rid of this frustration with feeling unwanted and being forced to beg for a seat at the table (and tbh sometimes as an immigrant that gets exacerbated). I think that's ultimately a symptom of capitalism itself.
So yeah idk if I have advice so much as just empathy for what you're going through. It's hard shit and it's honestly not fair you have to do so much performative bullshit to put food on the table on top of all the other shit going on in your life.
Just having someone commiserate is such a relief, especially someone so similar.
I'd LOVE to leave this country. My close family friends are German, and I've had the privilege of visiting a few times. I loved it! Perhaps in a few years (when my family situation is less messy) i can find something like that, it sounds wonderful.
Thank you for replying :)
I’ve been noodling a lot on "you can’t have it all." When I was younger, I thought this meant kids and demanding career without a stay at home partner or nanny. (Consequently, I was pretty hardline childfree for many years, before softening up into "whatever I decide, I do.") As I got older I realized we just have an unsupportive society.
And now, I realize it’s not just kids. It is hard to be a great employee, a good homemaker, a hobbyist, fit, responsive to all the 9000 forms of communication, etc. all on one person’s time. (Granted, we probably also have significantly higher expectations of ourselves, if I think about a 1960’s nuclear family, or a large family with well-learned (m/p)atriarchs who probably never stressed about housework.) You have to be a village to your friends and vice versa. Possible drama aside, we need to share subscription memberships, do our laundry together, babysit together, buy homes together, and try to do less together. The kind of modern person you’d think is possible with 16 waking hours a day is just, I think, not possible for more than a few disciplined people who willfully eschew things we probably never notice. I was surprised to find out the stress / slight resentment I feel at having to balance everything and attend to "my village" and myself is not uncommon.
You know... I live in Finland, a place famous for taking care of citizens. But sometimes I've felt that I personally didnt get enough help (mental health problems, the system is under a lot of stress in this area), but then I read about stuff going on in other places of the world and I realise its not that bad for me.
Surprisingly often I think of how I would have survived (or how fast I would have stopped surviving) in the US for example. My issues were not that bad but they shut me down socially completely at one point. I didnt pay rent for a few months, then the landlord came to my door with a mental health worker and they kicked me out to a sort of a care facility. Had I been in the US, I would have just been thrown out to the street AFAIK.
When my friends/family complain about "high" taxes, I always reply with "well what do you think would have happened to me if we didnt have a good support system?" or something similar. So I would like thank all the non-supporting systems for giving me excellent examples to bring up when discussing these things!
Ps. I hope this didnt become a random rambling rant, I havent had enough coffee today and halfway trough I forgot my original point, I apologize.
Honestly just keeping up relationships and being a charismatic/sociable person. I love my partner and my friends. Keeping up with people is just exhausting. At work I need to by an extraverted decision maker that plays the politics, leads my team, and mentors/advises other groups. I get home and switch into supportive partner mode; listening intently, comforting, doing fun activities. My closest friends have scattered across the country so there are texts and discords to be active in, regular game nights to attend. Then my siblings who are the only family I remain connected to, texting about their lives providing council when it's requested. Then there is my partner's family and friends who I like well enough but don't really share anything in common with. So we drive an hour to see them and make small talk for hours.
I love them all and the reason I do it is because they are important to me. But it doesn't come naturally, I think I would live a perfectly happy life as a hermit. I do make time for myself, gym 4 times a week, watching an F1 race, maybe an hour of a video game here and there. But that time is usually filled with an activity that provides an excuse to be alone. I miss quiet and solitude.
You must be living my life.
Throw in three teenagers and a toddler and bingo, life is just exhausting. If I do get time to myself it's walking the dogs, an hour of taekwondo (but one of the kids comes with me for that one) or it's doing chores, such as painting and decorating.
I can’t imagine doing it with kids right now. Props to you. They’re in my future and I’m sure I’ll find the compromises to make.
I feel pressured to get over my ex fiancé
What makes it unrealistic to me is, we were together for almost 9 years, so almost a third of my life. Engaged for 4 of those. My friend circle consisted of Him, and two other close friends. He's the only one I would see IRL. Even now, over a year and half since he dumped me, I can't get Him out of my mind. It became even worse a few months ago when I found out He's now engaged to his new partner He'd known for less than a year.
Having one third of your friend social circle basically forget about you, I think its unrealistic to be able to get over it in such a short amount of time, and it doesn't help being autistic, so "change" can already be a struggle for me.
It's mostly myself, and a close friend who I feel are applying the pressure. Me because I want to be over him and get out of this depessive cycle I am stuck in, and my friend because I think I've vented to them too much and they're tired of hearing about it
I think the expectation feels specific, but I know a lot of people go through this so it's definitely something many people suffer with. I think some people deal with it so much easier, they expect other to do the same.
I think expanding my social circle and possibly finding another relationship could change the expectation. I have made new friends in that time, Although some have started to fizzle out. I've tried to find another relationship, but I haven't for two reasons. 1. I want a proper relationship, I don't want to enter a rebound and hurt myself or the other person. 2. People I have liked either ended up ghosting me after a while, wanted too much too fast, or we both decided friends suit us better.
(Hope this isn't too long, and answers the questions)
This is pretty specific to my situation, but I'm going into my second year of engineering school. Summer internships are a pretty major "rat race". I'm already readying my portfolio website and materials for next summer. There's definitely a lot of pressure to get a job at a "good" place like Apple, Tesla, SpaceX, etc. I'm pretty worried about it, but realistically even if I don't get a position at a more prestigious place I will do entirely fine.
Where is the pressure for an internship at a "good" place coming from, for you? I don't remember any external pressure to get an internship, other than the pressure I put on myself to do it because I knew that it was super important for finding employment after graduation.
As a recent graduate who became a software engineer, the pressure for getting an internship at a prestigious company, at least for me, sorta came from seeing people I knew getting into those companies. I joined a discord server meant to help people with the software engineering internship interview process and seeing so many people get into the FAANG companies sorta pressured me to do the same to fit in with everyone else.
However, like @cmot17 mentioned, it really doesn't matter in the long run. Heck, even in the short run it hasn't made much of a difference. I got internships at sorta "mid-tier" companies and I was able to land a full time job whereas some of my peers who exclusively intended at FAANG companies are still looking for jobs since those companies hired so few return interns.
Ah ok, so it's sorta the "keeping up with the Joneses" of internships - the pressure is self-driven based on comparing yourself to others, not some kind of external factor (like parents pressuring you to get an internship for certain companies).
I agree that it really doesn't matter much. If you really want to work in big tech, it's certainly a bit easier to already have experience in that area. But as someone who works in non-FAANG big tech and hires college grads every year (both for internships and full-time), I really don't consider the type of company someone did an internship at when reviewing a resume. I'd like to see any kind of experience at all, so that I have some basis to evaluate the candidate and determine their motivations and how they learn, and use that to build context for an interview (and for full-time, knowing that they have experience in tech and don't hate it is also important).
But yeah, I think there's too much emphasis that students put on themselves to work for FAANG companies, especially nowadays where those are the companies doing the biggest layoffs.
Engineer here who graduated a few years ago. ANY internship will help, and real work experience will help even more. I worked part time at a grocery store and then had an internship a local company and that helped a ton in finding a job. Just showing that you can work, learn, and adapt will help a ton!
The absolute best thing you can do is just wherever you go get some good references and learn about anything, and then through that you learned XYZ on your resume. You got this, and don't let other people get you down!
I wouldn't worry too much about internships. Without one you can still land a good to great job after graduation.
Anecdote time! 20+ years ago when I was in college I was at a job fair in which one company, and I wish I could remember which one it was, told me that I lacked the experience to qualify for an internship. Now that absurd comment rendered me mute for a bit (most likely had the confused meme face on too) and I simply responded "OK" before walking away; but honestly, isn't the entire point of an internship to acquire experience? Regardless I managed to do quite well for myself in the time since then so again I'd say to not worry too much about it if you don't land an internship at $DREAM_MEGA_CORP.
Internships don’t matter that much. What matters are connections and experience. An internship can be a great way to build some useful connections and get experience, but there are plenty of others too. Don’t fret it too much :) Try to make connections with people in the industries you’re interested in, and build up your portfolio with personal projects.