Major and class standing: Linguistics, Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Senior
Where you interned at: Clinical Applications Of Speech Acoustics at MSU

What was your internship title and role/responsibilities?
As an undergrad intern with Clinical Applications Of Speech Acoustics, I had a lot of different roles and responsibilities. These included things from getting and setting up furniture to obtaining and analyzing data from speakers and amplification devices.

How did you obtain your internship? What resources did you utilize to secure your internship?
I obtained my internship by contacting one of my previous professors at MSU.

What did your daily routine include?
My daily routine included reading research papers and then going into the lab to apply what I had read.

Your favorite experience from the internship?
My favorite experience was being a part of the Science Fest here at State. Since my lab is still up and coming, we don’t deal with a lot of in-person clients, so it was very rewarding to see not only children being interested in our field but also how those affected by Parkinson’s disease appreciate what we do.

What was your least favorite part of the internship?
Since I am not the best with technology, my least favorite part of the lab was trying to figure out what went wrong when the programming or technology didn’t work.

What skills did you learn and/or build upon during your internship?
Although I didn’t necessarily enjoy working with technology, I believe I learned quite a few things about the technological skills needed for my field, including programs such as Python.

What did you learn about the industry or your career path as a result of the internship? What are your future plans?
Research does not necessarily progress in a linear way. Beforehand, I thought one step was done then the next, when in reality, there is a lot of backtracking. Once we thought we had finished one step and moved on to the next, something would happen and we would have to go back and adjust the first step. Although I thought this initially would be very frustrating, I found that I enjoyed it, as it taught me new ways to improve upon the work that we were doing

What advice do you have for other students seeking out internship opportunities?
Put yourself out there. It may be scary at first, as you may think people will reject you, but if you don’t ask, then you are simply rejecting yourself. Even if you are not able to find an internship at an organization you want, there’s a good chance they will know of other opportunities you could have in the field.