If you’re like any other college student, the thought of graduation closing in on you is frightening, and the idea of adulthood is becoming a painful reality. In the good ol’ days, a college degree could take you far. But today, unless you have a college degree, a 600-page resume printed on sparkly blue paper that smells like roses and at least 17 years of work experience in your desired field at only 22 years old, you may have to take a job that pays less than you would like, isn’t in the area you planned to move or doesn’t involve the kind of work you enjoy – just to pay the bills.

College students today are laser-focused on a pursuit known as “resume building,” which involves selectively looking for on-campus activities, internships and jobs that will “look good” on their resume.

Resume building is problematic for a variety of reasons. For one, it incentivizes students to overlook opportunities they might really enjoy since they aren’t as relevant to a future career choice as others. Not only this, but students who choose their extracurricular activities and internships solely based on how they will look to future employers may not be as invested in the opportunity as another student who is passionate about that same opportunity but did not have access to it.

Identifying and participating in opportunities with the primary goal of resume building is already a slippery slope. To make matters worse, there are students who need to prioritize resume building in order to maximize their post-grad opportunities but cannot afford to do so.

Some students may have a backup plan if they aren’t able to find the job they’re looking for after graduation such as working at the same insurance company that employed their grandfather for 35 years.

However, there are students who aren’t afforded the privilege of having a backup plan. They may be first-generation college students with working-class family members who don’t have the connections to get them the job they’ve been dreaming of having.

Or maybe they are international students studying in the United States who plan to live here afterward but after paying the high international student tuition costs, have no money to take a gap year to backpack in Europe while they figure things out.

Resume building costs money, participation in professional societies costs money and joining clubs costs money. Even having the right outfit to wear to a networking event costs money.

Club dues, organizations fundraisers at restaurants on the Strip and unpaid work opportunities may seem like no big deal to some people. For others, those small expenses can add up quickly which forces them to have to say “no” to activities that could truly benefit them in the long run.

Taking an unpaid internship in a city far from home over the summer, especially if the internship counts for college credit, can not only deprive a student of the opportunity to save money for the whole summer while working a job, but can also cost the student thousands of dollars. We’re already investing so much money in our futures in the first place by attending a four-year university. How much more money can we spare to beef up our resumes?