Editor’s Note: This is a guest commentary. The opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board.
The idea of a virtual internship sounds great. Flexible hours, no commute, saving money on things like work clothes or lunch, but there is one thing missing: socialization.
Throughout my college career, I have completed three internships. Two of them were virtual, one was in person. All three focused on a form of advertising and had very similar day-to-day operations, but my experience as an in-person intern versus a virtual intern were wildly different.
The global pandemic brought the world from an in-person to a virtual one, but three years later, people have forgotten about the benefits of going into an office. Socialization promotes connectedness and decreases loneliness. The Mayo Clinic reports that “socializing not only staves off feelings of loneliness, but also it helps sharpen memory and cognitive skills, increases your sense of happiness and well-being, and may even help you live longer.”
For interns, working from home (WFH) was the only option, and I was just thrilled to have the opportunity to learn. I eagerly opened my laptop every morning prepared to spend the day in one room staring at a screen. I focused on the positives of the situation and tried not to think about whether this would be a forever type of experience. Would I ever have the opportunity to commute to work, meet my colleagues and other interns, and actually feel like I understood this company?
This past summer, I had the opportunity to intern at a pharmaceutical advertising agency in New York City, my first in-person internship. It was nerve-wracking, commuting into the city, taking the subway down to the financial district and walking into a huge building with a doorman and badges, but I wouldn’t have changed it for anything. Within the first week, I had met my manager, her boss, the president of the company and both of its owners. I was given the opportunity to sit down with all of them, ask questions, connect and learn from them. For the next eight weeks, I had people in the company to say hi to and lean on if I needed support. My program had five interns this summer. We had never met until the first day of work, yet throughout the summer I had five women to go to lunch with, get drinks after work and learn from. Work gave me a social life that I never expected because I had never experienced it before.
Comparisons from my experiences working virtually versus working in person came automatically. This was my summer to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life and discover if I had put myself in the right field of work. The pandemic changed many things in the advertising agency; Forbes writes that many companies increased their social media presence, cut funding in ad-spending and re-evaluated their target audiences. This past summer, I realized one of the biggest challenges as an intern came from the lack of socialization because of WFH. The most important thing was client contact. Every advertising company is constantly pitching to keep clients and acquire new ones, but how can you convince a company to trust you when the best you can do is give a Zoom pitch and exchange exuberant emails? There is no personalization and no way to differentiate yourself from another company.
Spending the summer with a group of colleagues who were working the normal 9-5, five days a week opened my eyes to more downfalls that came with WFH. Because you were working from home, there was no reason to ever stop working. My manager would still be speaking with clients at 9 or 10 p.m. because it was expected that she would be available. It was harder to maintain boundaries because work life and personal life existed together. There was no work-life balance or the opportunity to leave work at work.
My internship experiences were unique and new, with the biggest takeaway being that the knowledge I gained from an 8-week in-person internship surpassed what I had learned after two virtual ones. People just need to be aware of the effects WFH has on themselves and others and remember the benefits of socialization, even if rolling out of bed and jumping onto Zoom seems like the easier option.
Cate Middleton (she/her) is a senior advertising, public relations and marketing communications major. Contact her at [email protected].
