What will you do with your degree?

Sanford Underground Research Facility is excited to announce that they are now accepting applicants for their 2019 internship positions. Here to tell you about these positions is our current communications specialist and former communications intern, Erin Broberg.

It never fails. As a student, you tell someone where you attend university and what degree you are pursuing. Whether you’re talking to an interested aunt at Thanksgiving or a teacher from high school, the follow-up question is always the same: “What do you plan to do with that?” 

The question is daunting, to be sure. The career options in most fields can be incredibly diverse and opportunity-driven; it is nigh impossible to create a fully fleshed-out, five-year plan.

I’m no stranger to this question. Well-meaning people often ask what possible career options are open to English majors who don’t want to teach (that’s me). I began to dread this question—until I began my internship at Sanford Lab. 

I had been working in my position for about a month when the moment of realization came. I spent my first weeks at Sanford Lab soaking up information about neutrino physics, dark matter theories and engineering for science—things that I had never imagined I would have a front-row seat to learn about. I kept busy learning about the facility, helping plan a city-wide science festival called Neutrino Day and developing my skills in writing, graphic design and photography in the communications office. 

Amidst it all, I was assigned a new story. An international collaboration was beginning to electroform copper on the 4850 Level of Sanford Lab for a next-generation experiment. I needed to talk to one of the lead researchers on the project, so I rode the cage down a mile deep. I traded coveralls for clean room garb, donning a full-body Tyvek suit, a hair net, two layers of shoe covers, a facemask, two layers of latex gloves, safety glasses and a hardhat—all to protect the ultra-sensitive experiment as I entered the class-100 cleanroom. Inside the cleanroom, I witnessed the first stages of the process that would produce the world’s purest copper. I talked to a researcher about how this experiment pursued answers to questions about the origins of matter in the universe—about why we exist at all. 

That evening, as I drove home, I reflected on the fact that, in one day, I had ridden a cage a mile underground to a cutting-edge research space, entered a class-100 cleanroom, talked with a prominent chemist and written a story about electroforming the world’s purest copper for a next-generation particle physics experiment. 

I laughed to myself, realizing I finally had a fitting answer to that daunting question. 

What can I do with my degree? Just about anything.

Sanford Lab Internships

Internships at Sanford Lab offer each student the opportunity to apply their degree is this unique environment. 

Are you an engineer interested in how Sanford Lab will host the Far Site for the largest science experiment on U.S. soil—underground? 

Are you a scientist wondering how ultra-sensitive physics experiments are attempting to answer fundamental questions about the universe? 

Are you interested in the environmental, safety and health procedures required to make work safe and beneficial? 

Do you want to share the story of Sanford Lab with local and international communities through visual and written communication? 

If so, take my advice and apply. You just might find your own answer to that daunting question. 

Up to six undergraduate and graduate students work with scientists, engineers, and safety and health experts from around the globe, gaining valuable real-world experience while helping Sanford Lab meet the challenges of operating the deepest underground science laboratory in the United States. 

Application deadline is January 16, 2019. For more information, visit our internships page