While most Northwestern students are busy filling out internship applications this fall, some students are pursuing alternative career-building experiences.
Weinberg senior Lucas Saidenberg said he obtained a $4,000 Summer Undergraduate Research Grant from the Office of Undergraduate Research to fund his summer research in 2022 after not securing an internship.
He spent the summer creating music software that can mimic different instruments by mapping out the values of particular harmonics.
“As a computer science major, it was a combination of the two things I like,” Saidenberg said. “I very much enjoyed myself, and it made the summer feel worth something.”
He said the grant covered the costs of the software he needed for his project, as well as his basic living necessities.
Saidenberg said he recommends undergraduate research to first- or second-year students who have a passion for a particular project.
Weinberg senior and Northwestern Career Advancement student ambassador Nancy Zhen said helping students made her realize that students don’t need a traditional internship to show employers they have the skills necessary for a job. There is always a way to find transferable skills, she said.
For students not interested in traditional summer internships, Zhen recommends NCA programs like the NU Externship Program, where students can job shadow NU alumni, and the Summer Internship Grant Program.
Instead of pursuing internships, Weinberg senior Noah Edelman chose to work for startups through the Garage.
“I’ve always been interested in creating things from scratch, and I realized stubbornly when I was a freshman that I would rather figure out a way to work for myself instead of working for a boss,” he said.
Edelman utilized funding from VentureCat, an NU startup competition, to help launch his startup The Neuron around two years ago. The Neuron is a newsletter about developments in AI and currently has over 400,000 subscribers.
Because he has his startup, Edelman said he is not currently applying for jobs and plans to continue working on The Neuron. He hopes to eventually sell it and use his startup experience to help other companies that are starting out.
Students shouldn’t let the pressures of their peers influence them or put themselves in a box, he said.
“I’m a completely different person than I was three or four years ago, and I’m happy I didn’t let my 18-year-old self dictate what I wanted to do because then I would be stuck in that path,” Edelman said. “If people can be a bit more flexible about what they expect to do, that opens up other opportunities for them.”
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