u/Melodic_Sympathy_767

so i'm 6 yoe backend, finally got a recruiter ping from apple for a SWE role on services. team-match call is in 9 days. did a dry run over the weekend with my old roommate to check the overlay before the real round, suggestion box was tiny. behavioral prompt loaded too. not much of a stress test honestly, he was reading off a leetcode tab not pushing me. i've been kind of behind on apple-specific prep, last cycle i bombed a meta phone screen on a dp question i had done five times in prep, that freeze moment is the part i'm scared of. apple's stack is half objective C and internal tooling so the round content i can prep on leetcode mediums and some sysdes. but i keep going back and forth on the annual plan with eight days to go. should i pull the trigger now for the team-match and the interview process after, or wait and do a single month for the interview process only?

I'm a student graduating in May and doing an internship with a company in the spring. Honestly, this is only my second week, but now it's Thursday and seriously all I can think about is how completely drained I feel. The company is good and almost everyone is nice, but the hardest part is sitting in an office for 9 hours and waking up early enough to be there at 7:30 in the morning.

Thankfully, I'm only in this position for 10 weeks, but oh my God, is this my life from now on? I don't understand how people who have kids, dogs, long commutes, or real responsibilities do this every day and still have energy left for anything else. People keep telling me I'll get used to it and that this is simply the nature of adult life, whether here or anywhere else.

The thing that's bothering me is that I know I don't want to work retail, food service, or any physical job, so an office job is probably the path I'm on. If you have any advice, ways to cope, or even rants from other interns, I need some reassurance right now.