My Experience As an Intern Working Remotely
When I first started my current internship early last summer, I was a little bit shocked to realize that I would primarily be working alone. Physically, at least. I was on a team with five other interns, but I was the only one in my office in Chapel Hill, NC. One intern was located all the way on the west coast and the other four were located in the company headquarters outside of D.C. In the beginning I had no idea how closely we would get to know each other, but by the end of the summer, I voluntarily made the trip to go visit the team at the company headquarters and gave my final presentation in person.
Every week, we had a group meeting facilitated by our manager where we called in on Google Hangouts to update each other on projects. We slowly got to know each other’s working styles and personalities. Eventually, we started a group intern G-chat, where we talked more casually about the internship and life outside of the internship. About halfway through the summer we started doing weekly intern lunches, during which I would call in to a meeting via Google Hangouts and eat lunch with them. (So extra, I know.) My manager also had the idea of spending one of our weekly meetings giving office tours, so we could see what it was like to work in the other locations. The interns at HQ took their laptops and phones around to give a live tour of the office. It was hilariously unstructured, but so much fun to see!
By the end of the summer, I started to joke with the other interns about the possibility of coming to visit them at HQ, and after talking about it enough I realized I had the ability to actually make it a reality. D.C. wasn’t that far from me, and it’s not like I would have this opportunity during the school year. Plus, it would give me an opportunity to scope out the company in real life and meet my manager in person. On my drive up to D.C., part of me was nervous that the trip wouldn’t be worth it, but most of me was excited to see everyone. I had a great experience getting to see my team in real life and seeing the office was definitely worth it!
Throughout my time as an intern, in an effort to fully integrate myself into the team, I’ve had to try extra hard to contribute comments during the group meetings and communicate in the G-chat as much as I could. I’d like to think it paid off! Now, the whole process seems extremely normal. As part of the internship experience, I knew I also wanted to network with other people at the company and I initially thought this would be pretty difficult considering everyone I wanted to talk to was hours away from me. However, I learned how to professionally send emails to different people I was interested in getting to know, then I would schedule time on their calendar to chat and virtually follow them to meetings throughout the day. Everyone was incredibly supportive, and in a way I think being remote made me more confident! I didn’t have to deal with the face-to-face awkwardness nearly as much.
I decided to continue the internship from the summer into the fall and spring, along with two of the other interns! Although I went from a 40-hour work week to a 20-hour work week we still have plenty of time for valuable projects and team meetings. It has been really neat to be at a company long enough to see both the company itself and us as interns grow and change.
The team-building was so important throughout the internship. It allowed us to connect as people, so much so that our weekly intern group meetings became the highlight of my week. I learned a lot about myself from the value I got out of having a really strong team. I learned that I care much more about the work I am doing when I have the opportunity to regularly collaborate with others, communicate about my progress on projects, and give and receive valuable feedback. Overall, I am so appreciative of the technology that allows us to contribute something to the table, no matter where we are located.
