Does it matter where you take an internship?

[sydneyfranke]

Sophomore Mechanical engineering major. Will declare Aerospace minor once I have the prerequisites. I would like to eventually work in the aerospace discipline, however my state does not have a university that offers the aero major.

A big part of me says "take what you can get," when it comes to internship opportunities but what if you land something that might seem less ideal? I definitely would like to find an internship with a private or government aerospace company, seeing as that's "what I want to do", but a lot of these companies have pretty high course requirements that I won't be getting to until my Junior year. This leaves one summer to land an internship and also places a lot of stress on me to actually get one of these highly competitve positions.

However, I have an offer that is short of in hand offer a company in my university's city. It would be like 5 minutes from my apartment. The only thing is that the company works a lot in the construction and energy fields - both of which I don't really see myself working in. On one hand it is SOME experience in engineering, but in the other hand it doesn't really seem like applicable experience when I go to get a full time job.

Anyways, what do you guys think about this? I still plan on applying to these aerospace companies in hopes of landing something, but I feel I'm a little under qualified. I currently have a work study job building circuit boards for what will be balloon satellites so I'm not just sitting dead in the water. But will an internship with an energy company help me with getting a job in another field? Thanks.

 

[Curl]

You're on the right track with the "take what you can get" idea. Internships are hard to land.

 

[Shaun_W]

It's infinitely better to have done something than nothing.

 

[ehilge]

Take it. Any experience is good experience.

Actually, I was in sort of a similar position a couple of years ago in that I wanted to go into aerospace as a mechE and took and internship at a power plant. I found power and energy to be just as interesting and now my career is heading that way.

 

[timsea81]

I agree with the other guys. If you want to do aerospace, by all means try to get that internship, but if it's too competitive and you don't make the cut this year, you are much, much better off with some experience in construction than with no experience. Who knows, you might change your mind later and go with construction, and if not, there is a lot to learn at that internship that is applicable to both fields.