Working toward an Internship
By Stephanie Oshiotse UA’28 and Jim Stellar
In our first meeting of the new fall 2025 semester, we decided to look for internships that are meant for next summer. We did some research on the companies Regeneron and Eurofins to find any lab-based research internships; both are in the Pharmaceutical/Biotechnology industries. I was able to go to the career fair last Wednesday to meet with each recruiter of the companies and discuss my plans concerning next summer and what I am looking for. Now I am applying to the internships that they have open and am hoping to be their next selection.
Now it is a little while later. Can you catch us up on what has happened? This is now a real-time dialogue, which is cool.
I can say that I quite enjoyed meeting with the company representatives at the career fair on campus. It was a pleasure to meet them and I felt like I could see how I would fit in with either company. I also went to the UAlbany Career Services Office and they helped with my resume and to apply to both of these internships. Now I am in the process, mid-semester, of waiting to see if anything comes through.
This is a great step, but let’s talk about what made you focus on an industry application of your undergraduate training so far. Why not plan to go first to a graduate or medical program?
That is a great question Professor Stellar. Applying to internships is a great way to gain hands-on in-person experience in whatever field that you may be interested in and from there you can decide just from that little taste whether it’s something you want to go into or not go into. For me, getting experience in a real working lab will definitely influence my decision in whether or not I will pursue a research based career and then from there I could pick and choose which program seems like the right fit for me. I want to know what I most likely may be doing in the future and see if I truly love it.
Now we are getting somewhere. You just said, “…getting experience in a real working lab will influence my decision…” How does it influence your decision? I know you are not there yet, but talk about what you expect will be your feelings when you are in that future laboratory.
That’s another great question Professor Stellar! I will most definitely feel excitement to finally be in a lab and explore all that it has to offer. Another feeling I expect may be some uncertainty. Not even towards whether I’m going to do this in the morning, but towards whether I am going to enjoy it or not enjoy it or whether I deserve to be there. Imposter syndrome is something I struggle with, so I’m guessing that I may feel that in the future. But overall, I already feel a yearn to be a part of an environment like that just to get a glimpse of what my future may be like working in the pharmaceutical industry.
This discussion reminds me of what this blog features as its functional tag line. It is a quote from Blase Pascal “The heart has reasons that reason does not know.” A deeper description comes from the Nobel-Prize winning work of Daniel Kahanman who wrote the book in 2011 Thinking Fast and Slow that talks about decision making as being driven by two systems. One of them (System 1) is fast, always on, intuitive, and what he calls a heuristic or short cut (e.g. that feels about right). The second one (System 2) is thoughtful, deliberative, even calculating. So, if I am contemplating in investing my money in a stock, that is system 2. But if I know that all of my friends just bought that stock, I might have FOMO (fear of missing out) and now be biased toward reaching a positive conclusion from my system 2 analysis. The idea is that both participate with a balance between them that could change under different circumstances and with different positive or negative outcomes.
That’s very true Professor Stellar. It’s very applicable to what I was just discussing with you. There are two possible outcomes of how my experience with the lab internship will be. If I let the imposter syndrome and the uncertainty get to my head, I will undoubtedly not find the joy in my internship like I should. Because overthinking really does make you doubt yourself and your purpose of being in a space where you deserve to be. However, if I let my heart lead and walk into the opportunity with an open mind and flexible expectations, I can make the absolute best of the internship if it may not turn out to be exactly what I thought it was going to be.
We will be back to see how this turns out.
