internships

waxie · #1 07-30-2006, 10:50 AM

Since I was a freshman in college, I've had a bunch of internships. Most of them have been at political places or non-profits, but I've done a few private sector internships as well. I'm curious to hear about other people's experiances with internships in their field.

Personally, I've found most of my internships to be relatively unfullfilling. I've had a few internships where I was given long-term projects, but mostly I wind up doing lame grunt work.

There have been two exceptions. When I was a sophomore, I did an internship with a labor union in Philadelphia. The head of the union took a liking to me and would let me come with him to all sorts of meetings. I would just sit back and watch everything unfold-- then he'd ask me to analyze the everything on the ride back to the union hall. He told a ton of stories and seemed genuinly interested in helping me learn about the labor movement.

Why sorts of experiances have you guys had?

sushijerk · #2 07-30-2006, 11:16 AM

Mostly cell culture lab work in pharmaceutical/biomaterial companies. Most of the time the lab work was tedious as hell but we did do a bunch of animal studies which were quite interesting.

When I was at Wyeth we were testing anti-depression medication by using drugs which altered hormone receptors in the brain. It was theorized that this kind of medication negatively altered learning ability so we essentially doped up a group of mice and put them through memory/coordination tests to review the effects.

There was another study with an alzheimer's drug which suppresses the formation of plague in neural tissue. The cool thing is that this was one of the few studies I was involved in that actually felt "real" medication research. The crappy thing is that results had to be verified by dissecting the mice and removing thier brains, which I was not comfortable doing.

Brag: I also got to play with monkeys (thankfully these were not being used for any research at the time).
Beat: Poo throwing is for real.

Terrabon98 · #3 07-30-2006, 09:52 PM

I've had three internships now in college (about to be entering my senior year).

1. A start-up marketing firm, where I made phone calls and updated a big online database. Boring, but I made my own hours, did whatever the hell I wanted, and wore what I wanted. Unfortunately, the company folded about halfway through the summer. I realy learned very little from this job, and did not find it rewarding at all.

2. Automtovie Consulting Firm. This was last summer, and a lot more interesting. I still didn't learn TOO much in terms of what I was interested in, but I did get a flavor of what it's like working in a real workplace, etc. Nothing too special

3. This summer I am doing a finance internship at MSFT in Seattle. It has been a very fun, exciting summer. I work on the M&A team and get to see the internal workings of a lot of acquisitions that they are currently working on.

I think the overall trend has been from less rewarding jobs (both extrinsic and intrinsic) to more rewarding. It also has helped me find what I am actually interested in doing after working in a variety of different roles.

thedustbustr · #4 07-31-2006, 12:01 PM

engineers: Lockheed Martin. you pretty much need to be a rising senior to get your security clearance though. but you do relevant things.

you obviously need to have a very competitive resume to get in.

afterthought: most importantly, i work 4 10 hour days a week, and take fridays off! you can pretty much come in and leave whenever you want, as long as you make it to the team meetings (or at least teleconference in)

junglewarfare · #5 07-31-2006, 12:18 PM

TDB,

Working at Lockheed Martin is pretty baller.

philipsaurus · #6 08-01-2006, 08:26 PM

i interned at merril lynch last summer. it sucked balls. i had to research things 35 hrs a week for my boss. i hate powerpoint / excel / databases.

Little Fishy · #7 08-01-2006, 08:58 PM

I had my first internship this summer. I lived in Germany from May until the end of July working for a German consulting firm doing research and what not. It was mediocre. I worked 50-60 hour weeks, and a lot of it was borring. I learned a decent amount, but also realized that a lot of management consulting is made up of BS. I wasn't very impressed with a lot fo the material I was exposed to. overall I am happy i did it but wouldn't want to do it again.

-no i didn't go to any world cup games
-i was living in duesseldorf mostly which isn't a very fun city- and i was somewhat isolated which sucked.

edtost · #8 08-02-2006, 09:37 PM

I've interned at hedge funds doing quantitative research the past two summers ... while they were very different experiences, I met a lot of really smart people at both companies and was able to do some very interesting work.

redrooski24 · #9 08-02-2006, 10:52 PM

ed,

How'd you score an internship working at a hedge fund? That sounds like it could be a really fun and rewarding internship.

edtost · #10 08-02-2006, 11:11 PM

Last year was through someone I knew who was starting a fund, who was looking for someone to come in part-time to replicate and expand upon an academic paper.

This year was through on-campus recruiting (the group I work with manages both mutual and hedge funds, but is part of one of the big investment banks).

In the second case, having had previous industry experience helped in getting the position, as did having done original research at school.

They were/are very fun and rewarding, though there are always times when you're reminded that its a job. I've met and had a chance to work with lots of really smart people from varied backgrounds (academia, trading, risk management, etc), and had the been able to do original research in interesting areas, and actually impact investment decisions. In short, I got tremendously lucky, and am enjoying trying to make the most of it.