I also agree with you Karen! As a student, it’s not always possible to secure an internship/co-op, as you are also competing with the hundreds of other students who are likely in the same exact position you are: having no experience, but hungry to get some. The next best thing in my opinion is like you said, to get involved with research on campus with some professors. You never know where that might lead you, whether it be academia with a project that you find interesting or as a stepping stone to land your first job. One of the most important things that I saw and used from doing research with a professor on campus was focusing on how you might transfer the skills and experience you acquired during your research to the industry. For example, you may want to acquire a role as an R&D Engineer, so you may want to actively ask you professor for responsibilities within your lab that reflect what that kind of engineer might do. When you frame your research experience in a way that you can have transferrable skills, you are no longer a student with no experience, but one that has had exposure and is yet to apply it in the industry! Shaping my experience with my professor so that I could have as many skills as possible to bring to the industry helped greatly in getting into industry for myself.