Career advice needed - TheOnlyDoubleF

a. lots of places don't do internships at all

b. getting 6 out of 30 responses is actually good, most of the time you will hear nothing at all

c. going back to eden would be far from a bad thing, 1 years work experience at a company is good.

The amount of available internships compared to the amount of students that search for one is reeally small. Take it as a good sign that they want you back at Eden

If you're tight with time, I'd personally take the internship at Eden. A lot of companies take forever to answer and unless you're lucky, 1 month is preeeetty short to get an answer, do an interview (I guess you'd most likely still have to do one) and get everything sorted out. There are also a lot of students out there looking for internships...Eden's a good company, it would be a good experience (especially if you have the opportunity to do something else than last year and see a different side of production) and you'll have the whole time during your internship to look for a proper position for when you're done.It's also good to put on your resume and I don't think it reads badly that you went back to the same place for a second internship. And you never know, that can lead to a job opportunity there if you prove you're worth it. Whether you'd take that or not is another question

take the offer you have, you'll have stupid amounts of time to try new things later on

A no brainer. Take up Eden's offer.

From a perspective, from someone having their own company and are now dealing with interns and employees too.

If I had an intern that I really liked, I would be more than grateful if they would come back for a second term if they needed it.

Eden probably likes you and think you can deliver what can be expected - what more can you ask for. Travel the world, seeking new experiences? You can do that later on, like dux said, it's a no brainer and if it's for 4 months only, that's like no time.

That "safe circle" - that's where you wanna be right now in your career.

Glad to see I didn't give him the wrong advice

I literally said:

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The way I see it is that you are loyal, committed and a team player (in case you return). Plus, apparently you were good enough that they WANT you to return. It's a compliment really. Can't look bad on your resume.

Don't look at it like you'd be doing the same internship twice. You've convinced them the first year that you are a valuable contributor and now you're going back to help some more. And think about how much you could actually learn and contribute in 4 months time: getting somebody integrated into the project/being productive takes time (especially on a junior level). That's probably why studios hardly hire interns - or only at least for a duration of 6 months... and think about the tasks you would then get assigned to : Eden already knows you and might give you more interesting assignments, so this does not sound like a bad option at all. Cheer up!

Go for the internship, all experience is valuable. When I first tried to get into the industry I applied for every junior design position in the UK and some abroad, I even sent speculative applications to pretty much every studio trying to get a foot in. I mustve sent 100+ applications over 18 months and I got 2 official responses.

One was a firm no because for their junior level design position they required a degree in Computer Science (....) and the other was for an interview for Black Rock which I passed but never got to start because Disney started shuttering them.

When I called up places trying to get answers the general gist of the response was "Oh for Junior positions we require industry experience" which is kind of hard to get without being a Junior or getting super rare internships.

Is the job at Eden an intership ? With possibilty to turn into a real contract ? Because if not, you probably know that they are only picking an intern to do a fulltime job without the goal to teach you (from my own experience )... Meaning that they'll probably just ask you for a full time week as an employee while paying you shit. Internship in France is cancerous, companies use it not for testing new applicants but for having cheap employees that they can fire whenever they want.

If you think that you'll be able to land a real contract here, then go for it. 1 year experience is always good to pick, and as far as I know their project looked nice... You will gain motivation and assurance to apply to bigger studios then, and a cool project to show on you CV.

Yeah, when I was in, I'm not saying it was bad or that we were exploited but on around 20 employees in the studio, 3 were interns, and the tasks I had to do weren't very limited : as a 3D artist intern, they asked me to create the UI of the game and some DA artwork to give the game its own style... So it was a very good experience, but I know they gave me tasks they shouldn't have give me.

To go back on the tracks of your question : i think you answered it well. As a intership, being paid with a bonus (yeah I had it too, very pleasant, without this bonus i would have sleep in the streets or something like this ), with a cool human sized team, with daily reviews, and a decent project, etc... Is all you can hope.