<p>Our S called yesterday about some summer options he's considering. He's been offered an internship/fellowship at NASA to program robots (with about 200+ other interns) in Newport News,VA. He's also been offered a fellowship to continue to analyze speech in the lab he's been working at all year & will continue to work at next year. He's also waiting to hear back from several private industry internships he applied at this summer. Ideally, he wants to try one of the private industry jobs to see what the fit is like & possibly see if he gets a job offer upon graduation. NASA needs to hear back by Wednesday morning; the college will keep his position available until he decides & offer it back to him in the fall as well.</p>
<p>I suggested he contact the internships he's waiting to hear back from to see whether any of them can give him the status of his application and the likelihood they can offer him a position, explaining that he's weighing the other two options but would really love to work for company X. He was taken by this suggestion and will contact each of them & his friends to see if he can get some answers. I told him once he has that info, we should talk again Monday evening.</p>
<p>Anyone have more thoughts about this? Anyone know anything about the NASA internship? Would love to have more insights and we're tickled that he has options in this economy.</p>
<p>The NASA internship is always a good one. I know my sister has been trying for almost 2 years to intern with them as an AeroSpace engineer with no luck. </p>
<p>Other than that I’d tell him to go wherever he either A- has a strong interest in or B- would love to work after graduation (i.e. type of company or whatever)</p>
<p>Hope that Helps! Best of luck to him in deciding, he already has some great options clearly!</p>
<p>Thanks very much! We’re excited about it and will encourage him to accept it unless something unbelievably fabulous is offered from a private industry firm by Monday, that he feels he must accept. I have heard that at least one intern got some amazing job offers from many places after his NASA internship & he attributes it for some/much of the success.</p>
<p>One of my friends interned at NASA in the Materials Science division a few years ago and said it was a less-than-stellar experience. She complained about the lazy attitude of a lot of the workers since their funding was guaranteed from the government, and how people tended to work short hours. She wound up getting into every grad school she applied to, but I imagine that had more to do with her being a stellar student and having other great research/work experiences.</p>
<p>When S spoke with NASA about it, they admitted you get out of it what you put into it & there is no limit to what you can do while you’re there. I am waiting to hear what S decides; thanks for this perspective. S is highly motivated.</p>
<p>Sorry to hear it was the NASA employees rather than the interns who were unmotivated. That’s what hubby thought, as he works for the federal government and sees the same thing at his office more often than he’d like.</p>