During their physics degree at the University of Birmingham, Marion Cromb did four internships across industry and academia. They speak to Laura Hiscott about what they learnt from these varied experiences.
This is the third in a series of internship case studies that we are publishing throughout August. You can find the full series here.
While the summer can be a nice break from studying, three months can feel like a long time to have nothing to do. After an extra-long summer between finishing a one-year art foundation course and beginning a physics degree at the University of Birmingham, Marion Cromb “never wanted to have another summer without much to do”. So they sought out internships to keep them occupied every summer throughout university.
Cromb had mixed experiences of internships. The first one was at a 3D-printing company based in London, and was unpaid apart from travel expenses. “I learnt a lot about employment law,” says Cromb, who ended up negotiating an early end date because the work was repetitive and not very interesting. “You should make sure you’re getting something out of it, and don’t be afraid to quit early if you’re not” they say, “especially if it’s unpaid.”
Despite this negative experience, Cromb searched online for internships the following year, and had better luck when applying to Metaswitch, a telecommunications software engineering company headquartered in London. The application process involved aptitude tests around basic maths and reasoning, as well as an interview. “You didn’t need specific coding skills. Metaswitch was going to train us, so it was just about making sure I had the fundamental skills and would be worth training.”
During the internship, Cromb was based at Metaswitch’s Enfield location, and built code designed to send manufactured data packets across a connection to see if there was any loss, which is a standard networking protocol. The code was built in the programming language C, and had to meet company standards. “That was great experience of learning good coding practice, and the code was actually sold to customers at the end, which was cool.”
Cromb was one of many interns at Metaswitch, and the company arranged lots of social activities for them to get to know each other. “It was 2016 – the summer of Pokémon Go,” they say. “The company organized a hackathon week, and we made a rip-off of Pokémon Go, called Metaswitch Go, where we used facial recognition to capture the faces of Metaswitch employees that you could put in your Metadex.”
Cromb did two further internships, both in academia. The first came about after they asked a professor at Birmingham, who was going to be their MSc supervisor the following year, about any potential projects they could do. The professor arranged a summer project in which Cromb investigated using laser light to improve the accuracy of particle tracking. Quantum uncertainty was the key: by increasing the uncertainty in the amplitude of the light you can reduce it in the phase, or vice versa, a trick known as “squeezing“ light.
Cromb heard about the second internship through an e-mail from their university, advertising a placement at Cardiff University. For this project they built a Michelson interferometer to be used in outreach demonstrations.
Comparing industry with academia, Cromb found that the industry placement was a lot more structured, with more guidance. “In academic placements, you often have less formal supervision, but you should ask for help if you need it. At one point in the project at Birmingham, we realized we’d spent a few weeks trying to do the wrong thing.” Another difference they found between academia and industry is that industry generally pays better. “Well, some industry pays better. Some doesn’t pay at all.”
Cromb advises prospective interns to apply to as many things as possible, “because you’ll probably get rejected from most things”. But there are lots of options out there, so it’s a numbers game.
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Once you have a placement lined up, there are things you can do in advance to make for a smoother start. Cromb e-mailed their supervisor the week before to let them know what their pronouns are, and to explain what it means to be non-binary. “There are some things you can get out of the way before you arrive” they say, “to make sure you feel welcome when you get there.”
Of the four internships Cromb has done, three were positive experiences, but even the less helpful one was a good learning opportunity, and they still got something out of it. “I got to keep some of the things we 3D-printed,” they say. “I still have some miniature replicas of museum statues and a wobble toy of BB8 from Star Wars.”
