Every year, it rolls over the entire student body like a storm cloud—the uncertainty, the fear, the excitement! For every student’s medley of emotions, the diagnosis is the same: it’s internship season! Everyone’s experience with internship hunting is unique, but it can always help to hear someone’s story for inspiration and ideas, so I’ll be sharing mine!

How I Got My First Internship

I personally emailed the company's CEO three years in advance and had numerous lunches, coffee chats, and interviews with them until I was finally offered the position. Just kidding! I probably completed about 30 online job applications. Out of those, I got interviews from two of the companies. From that, I got an internship offer in March. Thank you, Getinge!

Yeah, no one really takes the first pathway. What’s most common is people attending career fairs at Cornell, along with more personal information sessions held by companies at Cornell, where you can trade your resume for the contact information of employees and campus ambassadors.  

My Internship Experience

As a sophomore chemical engineer, I was offered the title of “quality continuous improvement intern,” so naturally, I had zero idea what to expect. The facility I was set to work for was located in Merrimack, New Hampshire, so as a native Long Islander, I had to relocate for the summer.  

If I had to pick one thing that stood out to me the most about my internship, it was how little math I had to use as an engineer! No Taylor expansions, no Reynolds numbers, no heat flux transfer equations, none of that!

The role of the quality department at Getinge is to make sure that the products Getinge manufactures - stents, chest drains, catheters - are of the highest standard and free of defects, especially since most of these medical devices will likely be with a person for their entire life. I helped the quality department create a new method of failure rate trending, which keeps track of how many defects (and what type) of defects are found per year within products in order to highlight any major issues in manufacturing over time. The old system was not normalized, or based on how many products were manufactured each year. The new method we created was a more accurate version of the old method.

My Takeaways

In the realm of technical experience, I learned a lot. I got to witness the inner workings of a global medical device company, from how the quality department functions to the manufacturing suites.  

I became close with the other interns, who were all from the New England area. It was a great feeling to leave my internship experience, having gained new friends.  

I got to explore New England! I went to local parks in Merrimack and made frequent trips to Massachusetts. I even visited Boston for the first time, which I loved!

There are so many great things you can take away from any internship, such as technical experience, friends, and new life experiences. I’m not sure if I’d ever work in quality again because I tend to enjoy work that is more hands-on, but I still loved my internship experience. Don’t fret about getting (or not getting) a specific one, because they all have amazing things to offer you!