Students still desperate for summer experience still have a chance with Athena & Ocean, LLC, or A&O. A&O is a small engineering firm that embraces hipsters’ ironic lifestyle, but students probably have not heard about them. A&O attended Spring Career Fair, but did not have many applicants, as their unpaid summer internships were not very desirable compared to typical high-paying engineering internships. However, students not wanting a mainstream internship missed out if they did not apply to A&O.
A&O has offices in Portland and Missoula, with unpaid internships in Boulder and Austin. The office in San Francisco closed recently due to being too played out.
Electrical engineering interns will work on design of solar distributed generation for pet shelter facilities. Physics majors will work in the research and development sector of said facilities. Civil interns will work on waste water drainage problems for their pro bono clientele in African states. Environmental interns will work on hydroponics installs. Geophysical engineering students are expected to work on geothermal energy R&D, along with other obscure research. Petroleum interns will clean the counters with soap-based products.
Interns will work with a variety of engineering software on Windows on iPads. No previous experience with computers is required, other than basic knowledge of how to swipe an iPad (experience with Instagram or blogging on their resume is highly valuable).
Workdays begin with a company-wide sun salute. Workspace rotates from beanbag to beanbag hourly. Perks include a company bike rack space and automatic withdrawals to donate to campaigns for Citizens United and the Human Fund. Interns are required to take photos of the company-provided lunch and Instagram them with the hashtag #AOswag, a marketing technique for A&O to get more intern interest in the following years.
Interviews will be held in Ballroom F sometime next week. Interview attire is casual, as the interviewers will likely also be wearing Chucks and ridiculous skinny jeans. Look for A&O’s flyers and chalk around campus for more information.