<p>What kind of projects do companies give you as undergraduate interns? If you had an internship, can you state what company and some of your responsibilities during your time as an intern? How much assistance and mentoring do you get from your mentor?</p>
<p>Depends, depends, depends.</p>
<p>If you are new to the field and don't have much experience, your employers know that and will guide you through what you need to do/learn. You don't need to worry about getting bombarded with things you've never heard of and being expected to do them flawlessly. At least this is my experience thus far.</p>
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You don't need to worry about getting bombarded with things you've never heard of and being expected to do them flawlessly.
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<p>And if you <em>do</em> encounter this, you're working for a lousy company, flat out. Same thing when you go into industry. Don't fall for that one (like I did...). You're entitled to a bit of explanation, and you're allowed to ask questions, you're not expected to know everything (heck, <em>anything</em>) when you get out of school, really.</p>
<p>I'd like to also know the load during internships. Are you constantly at work, or does this again depend on the company ..</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm sure they will teach you. I just don't want to get too nervous and screw up. I also don't think I can develop something new yet - just do grunt work for now.</p>
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Are you constantly at work, or does this again depend on the company ..
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<p>It really does depend upon the company. I think you'll probably be there less than the people who work there, and depending upon the state, I think any extra hours you work are typically counted as overtime, since interns are usually hourly employees...</p>
<p>Don't worry about screwing up. Interns are kind of expected to screw up. It's just a matter of whether it takes you two times of screwing up on the same thing to learn what you've done wrong, or ten times of screwing up on the same thing to <em>never</em> really learn what you've done wrong. It's primarily about improvement.</p>
<p>Depending on the size of the company, your work might be really important and it kind of puts the pressure on. I interned at a small pharmaceutical company last summer and for about the first month, I pretty much did exactly what the guy I was working with did but without the expensive materials. Once I was comfortable enough with this, I was in the lab alone doing some of this work with the real stuff that was actually important to the company and was needed for deadlines. Like aibarr said, Interns are sort of expected to screw up and your employer knows that. If you work for a bigger company that has a ton of employees, there might be less pressure on what you are doing, but I actually like the pressure. It makes you feel important and that what you are doing is actually going somewhere and that it is not just busy work.</p>
<p>And while the classes you take in college are important, you'll find that internships might not really apply all the things you learn. You probably won't need to apply series tests or do triple integrals on your internship. You will find though, especially in the first week or two, that people are always throwing more info about the company/company goals/company achievements/etc at you. That is where I first felt a little overwhelmed, but once you get going and start doing actual work, you get into a groove and it becomes just like any other job.</p>
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Interns are kind of expected to screw up.
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<p>How do you contribute to the company as an intern if you are "allowed" to screw up. :rolleyes:</p>
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You probably won't need to apply series tests or do triple integrals on your internship.
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<p>Good to hear ... I am hoping for a more hands on experience and learning
than high pressure analysis while sitting at a desk.</p>
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How do you contribute to the company as an intern if you are "allowed" to screw up.
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<p>Well, you're not <em>allowed</em> to screw up. You're just gonna. And they know that. You'll probably do some good work and contribute to the overall good of the company, but everyone screws up. The company's objective is to give good people enough training and double-check enough of the work that they minimize screwups. Interns are going to miss a higher percentage of the time than normal employees. On the other hand, interns are cheap, and if companies hire good interns and treat them well and train them enough, they might actually be willing to come back and work full time someday, and then they'll be a better-trained employee than they would've been if they'd had no familiarity with the company at the outset of their careers.</p>
<p>It's a gamble, on the part of the company, but by and large, it's a worthy one.</p>
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On the other hand, interns are cheap, and if companies hire good interns and treat them well and train them enough, they might actually be willing to come back and work full time someday, and then they'll be a better-trained employee than they would've been if they'd had no familiarity with the company at the outset of their careers.
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<p>That was the exact philosophy of one of the companies I used to work for. Over half the full time engineers in my department were former interns.</p>
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Depending on the size of the company, your work might be really important and it kind of puts the pressure on. I interned at a small pharmaceutical company last summer and for about the first month, I pretty much did exactly what the guy I was working with did but without the expensive materials.
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Same with the small company I worked for. The work of the full time engineers often times depended on the work of the interns. What if we screwed up? Then we did it again, because even if we had to take 2 or maybe even 3 times as long as an engineer would take, it would still be cheaper for interns to do the work.</p>
<p>As far as the load goes, again it depends on the company. I found that some days I was on my pretty much all day in the lab except for my lunch break. Sometimes I would work more than the 8 hours I had signed up for. But other times, I would sit in my office for a couple hours, check on some things, go back to my office, and get let home early. It all depends on the company and the people you work with.</p>
<p>At my company, the interns get awesome projects. We're a research-based company (AI/machine vision/networking/human factors), and we've had interns use their projects as the starting foundation for thesis work (we take both undergrad and grad interns) at places like CMU and MIT. Some of the full-time employees are former interns.</p>
<p>I did a computational neuroscience research internship at EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) as an undergrad, which was one of my bridges into CS. I wrote software for neural signal processing using input data from 60-channel arrays, and researched and implemented spike sorting algorithms. I worked about 50 hours/week, but some of that was voluntary - it wasn't like I knew other people in Switzerland that I could go hang out with after work.</p>
<p>When you go on internship job interviews, you should ask questions too. You have a right to know where you will live, what kind of work you will be learning to do, how much independent work will be expected, who will be your supervisor, etc. <strong>JUST ASK</strong></p>
<p>My son and his friends got internships in various engineering disciplines and in all sizes of companies. I will comment that larger companies seemed to have very regimented internship programs in place and had many interns. They knew they needed x number of interns at given locations to work in specified departments. Smaller companies who took only a few interns seemed to be more flexible as to what work would be done, what the interests of the students were and who would be supervising on any given project. Great experiences were had by all, so it just depends on what you want. </p>
<p>I agree with jessiehl. Wherever you work, the work will be needed and important. Consequently, some companies will only take juniors or seniors because they want a certain amount of skills in place. I have not heard of any engineering interns sitting around in an "intern pool" waiting for some assignment.</p>