I am Anish Kulkarni, currently in my third year, in the Computer Science Department. I wanted to pursue a research internship to gain hands-on experience in doing research, with the intention of gaining insights to eventually help me choose my career. Luckily I did not need to app and got a research internship via PT Cell. My internship was at Aarhus University in Denmark on Robustness testing of the C++ programming language on different architectures. At the university my batchmate and I were given a small cabin to work in. I had weekly meetings with the professor to report my work. I was shocked to see the work culture in Denmark. Everyone strictly follows the office hours, by 5 pm the entire building was empty. My work was a mixture of theory and coding. I would create algorithms for the task, discuss them with the professor to check for correctness and to try to optimize them, and then finally code them. Compared to usual acads it feels a bit slow, as you are working on the same problem for a month making gradual step by step progress everyday. I found this process a bit tiring and mentally exhausting. One thing I wish I would have done is to explore the problem on my own instead of strictly following the professor’s ideas, as that would have given me more exposure to the problem and maybe I could have made some progress on my own.
This year I plan to do a company internship, after which I will decide whether I want to go into industry or academia. Research is for patient people who are always looking forward to new and exciting challenges. Other than the university work, this internship also gave me the opportunity to travel Europe. I used to visit a new country every weekend and had an exciting summer. I would advise all the readers to try out research at least once in their time at college, if not as an internship then at least under a professor.
