Kids are often more realistic about their career aspirations than adults are. They want to be firefighters, policemen, and teachers - professions that are in constant, steady demand. More ambitious children might want a job as a doctor or veterinarian - still steady, but requiring a significant investment in education. The one exception is the kids who wanted to be astronauts. Since the beginning of the space program, there have only been 321 astronauts selected. Ever. Becoming an astronaut isn’t easy, but you don’t need to take one specific path to be selected as an astronaut - pilots, schoolteachers, doctors, scientist, and engineers have all been astronauts. Whether you’re working towards becoming an astronaut or you’re looking to have a meaningful impact on the space program NASA has a variety of interesting internships; in fact, we could spend the next week featuring individual NASA internships.
NASA is a large government agency with multiple internship programs, so instead of identifying each program, we’re going to guide you through how to navigate their website to find the right internship for you. Maybe it’s a test to weed out candidates who can’t deal with navigating through complex situations, but we were a bit overwhelmed by all the information on NASA’s jobs site. Luckily, NASA has aggregated all of their internship programs and put them on one page. NASA’s internship programs range from working on research projects to working in NASA’s history office. All of NASA’s permanent jobs are posted on USAjobs.gov, which is best explained by NASA’s Applicant Guide. Unfortunately, every internship program seems to have a different method of application, so you’ll need to do a little searching to figure things out. If you get confused, use the Student Programs Contact List to get in touch with someone who can answer your questions and help you with the process. There’s a ridiculous amount of information about both internships and careers at NASA, but it’s a little disorganized, so you’ll have to research carefully.
If you’re looking to intern at NASA, there are a few other sites that you might want to take a look at. First is NASA People, which is a site that appears to be targeted towards current NASA employees. It covers almost any question that you could have about what it’s like to work at NASA, so serious internship searchers should spend some time browsing this site. Second is the annual ranking of Best Places to Work in the Federal Government, which ranks NASA at fourth. This gives in-depth statistics about what kinds of people are more likely to be happy working at NASA (most employees), and what types of people are less likely to be happy at NASA. It also breaks down the rankings into a number of factors. Since you’re only considering signing on for a Summer, these two sites may not be all that important to you, but they are still worth reading.
More relevant to potential interns is this Wired article that details the struggles that NASA is having connecting with young people. The problem is pretty obvious. The space race to put the first man on the moon created an amazing amount of interest in NASA for our parents’ generation, but we have been given technology like the Internet to explore the world that we live in. Many young people don’t see the point in exploring space, when there is so much to discover right at our fingertips. The article includes a presentation that was given to NASA management by some of NASA’s younger employees on how to improve engagement with Generation-Y/Millennials/whatever you want to call us by emphasizing NASA’s continued relevance to the issues that concern our generation. Even people who are not interested in internships at NASA would do well to read this article as it brings up a lot of important questions about NASA, science, and the workplace. The Wired article ends by pointing to OpenNASA.com, which is a blog by NASA employees. It’s excellent, and as authentic of a resource as you’ll find on what working at NASA is like - especially for someone who is not far removed from college. Although the blog is unofficial, it’s the type of resource that every company could use to improve their recruiting practices.
Searching for internships at NASA will probably be a time consuming process, but we hope we’ve made it a little easier for you. If you enjoyed this post, you should subscribe to One Day, One Internship.
Links to Help You Begin Your Research
What’s the next step at NASA? An entry-level job, of course.
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Tags: aerospace, astronomy, government, Internships, science
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This is just a humor piece, but it’s about internships at NASA
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nasa_intern_hoping_to_go_on_space