breadwinner Posted January 11, 2020 Posted January 11, 2020 I'm in my 4th year of an ecology, evolution, and behavior program. Due to the job market and my personal strengths and weaknesses, I'm considering transitioning to industry (or another field) after I graduate. In order to get my foot in the door since my research focus is uncommon in industry, I am planning on doing an industry internship this summer before my (hopefully) final degree year. At this point it looks like I have a good chance of getting an internship offer. However, my advisers are implicitly against industry. One has complained to me of one or two of his students leaving after doing industry internships that they liked better, and the other is just very in love with academia and non-traditional/creative biology topics and jobs. I suspect that they will have a negative reaction to me doing an internship, but they are generally nice so they won't outwardly criticize me too much. I am worried that if I accept an industry internship for the summer it could reduce the quality of recommendation letters they would write if I did end up doing a postdoc after all. Of course, neither I nor any of you can read their minds so I'll probably just have to talk to them and see what happens. Does anyone have any experience transitioning to industry and having to tell their advisers, or doing such an internship? What was it like? Is there anyone who comes from a really obscure/unusual field in biology who has made this transition? Did you regret the loss of creativity? I realize that this experience depends a lot of personality etc. but I would love to hear other perspectives. Thanks for your help
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