Summer interns

The structure of the academic year in the US compared to the German structure is pretty different: Here we have about 10 weeks of instructions beginning in mid September, a break of one week, again lectures, again break (spring break!), the spring term and then - there's three months of "nothing". The salary of professors here only includes nine months because the summer is left out (but grants include it!). In Germany, we have two rather large breaks between the semesters and not a quarter-system. To make it a bit more interesting, some universities around here have terms as well :-)

Graduate students mainly do research during the summer, thought most people take a week or two off to go home. But it's also summer school and conference season. Some undergraduates work and some join a lab for those 2-3 months. We had quite a few in our lab as well and it's a great opportunity to catch a glimpse of research. Today lots of interns from groups all over the campus presented posters about their work. It was amazing to see how productive most projects were although the time was so limited! Most interns I spoke to were also very enthusiastic about their experiments etc. so it was fun to talk to them.