Internship Interview

So I was totally accepted to participate in a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) for Nanotechnology Collaborative Infrastructure Southwest (NCI-Southwest) They emailed me to tell me, so I didn’t really have a chance to actually talk to them about the internship. I don’t really think that I was prepared to ask them what I needed to know yet anyway, but I’ll get to that. I also got an interview for NEWT. That’s Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment. I was really favoring the NEWT one before my interview. In preparation for the interview, I asked my mentor, Robin, for advice. She told me to have a summary of my experiences in research so far including any findings and any places that I’ve presented. She told me to collect some information about the different research groups that I might be working with including the projects that they’ve worked on. She also told me to ask who would be training me and what kinds of tasks I would be doing in my role on the team. Oh, she told me to ask what kinds of opportunities I would have to present the work that I was doing as well, but I always forget that one. Though, all the programs that I’ve read about are very upfront about presenting.
     The interview was on the day that I had to respond to NCI to tell them if I’d participate in their program, and I didn’t want to respond in the affirmative if I wasn’t absolutely sure that I was going to do it. I asked Robin what the norms were for tentatively accepting an internship when you weren’t completely sure about your commitment. She advised me to just be honest and say exactly that. So I emailed NCI to let them know, and I did my interview with NEWT. The gentleman that did my interview was very nice, and I was excited to do the interview. He had emailed me the names of the three primary investigators. My first uncertainty about the program was that they were all engineers, but two of them talked a lot about interdisciplinary work and the importance of it, and they knew what my major was and what I was interested in, so I figured that it would be alright. When I did the interview and I asked him about the kinds of projects that I might be involved in, he kept saying that they would be almost entirely engineering focused. He said that the only way that Biology or Microbiology would be involved was as a means to kill bacteria. When I asked him about interdisciplinary work, he talked about engineering some more. I was so excited about a water treatment program, but after the interview, I was just feeling like it didn’t seem like the best fit.
     Then I checked my email, and NCI had emailed me to tell me that they had found a project for me that involved environmental microplastic pollution because I seemed like I was interested in that! I could have jumped for joy. How awesome is it that they tried to pay attention to what I was interested in and actually cared! And they were so patient about waiting for me to hear about the interview! Aww, I’m so excited to work with them. I emailed them back and asked them a few more questions and looked through their PIs (that are from a ton of different backgrounds). I still wanted to ask some of my advisors about their opinion before I responded, but I kind of knew then that I was favoring NCI.
     I have also applied for a fellowship with the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) and ASU West, so I emailed both of them. I won’t find out about ASM until May 13th at the earliest, and ASU West still hasn’t replied. I’m going to accept the NCI one. YAY! I’m excited. Anyway, I wanted to relay the questions to ask and things to think about. Did you get it?

THAT’S GONNA BE MEEEEEEEE :-D kind of :-P