I reached out to fellow University of Rochester juniors about their summer internships, jobs, and travels. I am so impressed by the range and depth of the positions they held. Out of the six friends I surveyed, three stayed in Rochester for the summer and three went back home. Two worked in different cities, and two traveled abroad. They are certainly a talented bunch! One important note is that some of my friends had unpaid internships; fortunately through the University, we can apply for funding for unpaid internships. We had luck with this, and it really opened up the realm of possibilities when applying to internships. Read below to learn about the various experiences my friends and I had this summer.
“I worked at a biomechanics lab on campus and finished making a protocol for an ultrasound experiment to track strain in the patellar tendon.”
“Over the summer, I interned with Deloitte in New Delhi. I worked in their energy and resources department on a USAID funded project to integrate renewable energy into the Indian grid. The Indian government has committed to having 175 GW of renewable energy in their grid by 2020, and the pilot I worked on was based on employing battery energy storage systems in order to help achieve that target.”
“I worked in an experimental syntax eye-tracking lab, programming an experiment that gives insight into how people process language. I also worked as a hostess at a restaurant downtown. It was cool to be in Rochester over the summer.”
“For the first month, I lived at home and interned with a non-profit. While I was home, I was able to babysit a bunch and I also proctored SAT and ACT exams on the weekend. Then I spent the rest of the summer working as a student nurse for children with type I diabetes in North Oxford, Massachusetts.”
“I interned at the Keck Graduate Institute where I learned about bioprocessing. The internship rotated through the upstream and downstream labs and the business management department. I’m also touring Greece with my sister in August.”
“I worked at Open Letter Books on campus this summer. I learned how the press selects, edits, markets, and publishes books while getting to edit, review, and help market books myself. For the last three weeks of summer, I traveled to Italy!”
Don’t these summer plans sound so impressive? I couldn’t believe my ears. What would your ideal summer internship be?