I can’t remember who told me this, but they said, “If you’re smart, you will learn from your experiences. But if you are really smart, you learn from other people’s experiences”. This sentiment was one that I often thought about at the start of each year during my BS-MS when I would begin looking for internships. Between 2020 and 2023, I successively got better at identifying my research interests, locating relevant labs, and applying for funding (i.e., I learned from my experiences), but I also made a lot of mistakes that I felt were avoidable if someone had just given me a heads up before. I wish I had the benefit of other people’s hindsight (i.e., learning from their experiences). I graduate this year, so I won’t be applying for any more internships, but I would like to document the cumulative sum of my experiences for others. Simply put, I will tell you about my mistakes so you don’t have to make them.
Why am I writing this? #
This post is the first in a series that aims to be a comprehensive guide to STEM internships, covering everything I think is essential. If you are past your first year of undergrad, you have probably realised that your coursework does not provide you with the skills and knowledge needed to apply for positions. Institutions leave you to figure it out on your own through trial and error. I’ve found this approach incredibly idiotic; you’re not the first person to apply for internships, and you will not be the last. Students have been applying long enough that we really should have a systematic way to teaching new cohorts how to do it. Instead, we shrug, so people keep making the same mistakes year after year. Imagine if you tripped over a stone on a pavement, but instead of putting up a sign to warn others, we left it as it was for the next 100 people to trip over the same exact stone.
Apart from being inefficient, this system also promotes inequality. If we had a systematic way of teaching students how to apply for internships, it would help ensure that everyone starts with the same materials and knowledge. Instead what happens when we leave students alone, those who have privileges (for example, a family member is in academia) gain an additional advantage. It’s unfair, and it sucks. We can and should do better. Unfortunately, I am not in any real position of power to enact the kind of institutional change that would be needed to remedy this. Instead, here is my contribution towards that cause.
What will the series look like? #
In this series, I want to cover everything. Start to finish, small details and big picture. The following are my guiding principles while writing:
- Accessibility: This series will be simple to read and understand. It will be free to read, always. I hate paywalls. Information that benefits humanity should be free.
- Comprehensive: This series will include everything I think is required to apply, so you don’t have to go hunting for left-out information.
- Relevant: Many guides were written by professors or non-students, so they lack perspective or miss key points. Many guides are also outdated and old. And finally, the thing that irks me most is that most articles and blogs are written by Western authors for Western audiences.
- High quality: I’ve read a lot of guides for applying to internships, and a good fraction is straight-up garbage. I fear that in the chatGPT age, the internet will be flooded with even more low-quality articles pumped out by LLMs. These usually offer very generic advice that is not actionable.
What will the series cover? #
Here are the main questions I want to answer; each will have a dedicated post.
- Why are internships in STEM important?
- What kind of internships are there in STEM?
- How do I know what my research interests are?
- Where can I do my internship?
- How do I apply to research labs?
- Making the most of your internship.
Some caveats #
I am writing this from personal experience, so take everything with a fat grain of salt. What may be true for an experimental and computational biologist who works on bacterial genome evolution (me) may not be true for other fields and subjects in STEM. Similarly, your degree, institution, personal life and other factors may differ vastly from mine. My experience is one of many. And finally, while I may use the word ‘guide’ while referring to these blog posts, treat them more like suggestions. If something I have written sounds irrelevant, ignore it. There’s no one way of doing this.
If you have suggestions or, comments or ideas, I’d love to hear them. Please email me ira (dot) zibbu (at) gmail (dot) com. I also post about opportunities and programs aimed at STEM students in India on Twitter (or X), so if that is useful, give me a follow at @coolscootre