My first post!

Hello and welcome to my blog! I am glad that you are here to help us all share resources on the best ways to get internships and jobs in the energy and utilities sector. I thought that for the first post I would first give a few hints about summer internships in this field that I have done in the past. I'm not gonna hold out on you guys, so any career opportunities that I have found I will share with you also.

Last summer I worked at the DC Water and Sewer Authority as an environmental engineering intern. DCWASA is a utilities company responsible for fresh water distribution to the DC area and also wastewater collection and treatment. Overall, this was a positive experience. They paid me well ($11/hour.....schweet!) and the people I worked with were pretty cool. A few words of warning: I had to push my supervisor in order to get to work on a project that actually interested me. They may try to pawn you off into office work if you are not an engineering or environmental sciences major (which I am not). And spending 8 hours a day staring at a computer screen entering data is not my idea of a good time. Secondly, the main location of DCWASA is all the way in Anacostia, which is inconvenient for commuting because there is no subway near by (I managed to get myself relocated to a much closer location). However, I learned a lot about the water utilities business and made some sweet money working there. Additionally, people there are career-oriented and very willing to give you tips on how to network.

The website for the internship program at DCWASA is: http://www.dcwasa.com/employment/internship.cfm

It is good to know that in general, utilities are desperate for young, college-educated job seekers. I know that many of my readers are not from the DC area, but I would recommend searching for your state's own water utility company and finding out whether or not they have an internship program. Many do, in order to encourage college graduates to apply for employment later. Note that many of these utility companies have a strong union presence, although this is not relevant to summer internship seekers. Additionally, the American Water Works Association (AWWA) has begun a career center devoted to helping employers in the utilities business find people to hire. The website for this career center is : http://www.awwa.org/careercenter/

Wow..I hope that I am not boring people! Please write and let me know whether this kind of information is useful. I am going to run and get some food at Wesleyan's Vegan Cafe....veggie stir-fry, sweet.

Best of luck!
Emily