Education

Student Internships Went Virtual, Too

By Amira Shimin

Spectrum staff

Though she attends a top-tier high school whose students are pretty much guaranteed a summer internship, Pop Joslaine Manos fretted that she would have no place to apprentice this year. So many workplaces were still struggling with how to make work work during Covid-19, how would they possibly fit in interns?

In early July, though, she got some good news: Neoworld, an online gaming site, would have her intern virtually, primarily making sure new games had no glitches before gamers started playing them.

She loves the work, but wishes she was in an office, learning hands-on, instead of from a distance. On the bright side, she’s glad she doesn’t have to commute from her home deep inside Queens to Neoworld’s office in Midtown Manhattan.

“Being remote forces connections to develop more because we are forced to make time for each other,” she said, explaining how she feels closer to this internship advisor than the one from last summer’s internship.

When you’re in person, it’s easier to be less attentive, the Brooklyn Technical High School senior said. But when you’re engaging virtually, you must make more of an effort to show you’re paying attention.

The summer of 2020 has made some interns and their supervisors rethink how internships work. Both sides say there and pluses and minuses to the virtual internships that are happening in these times.

Syed Tami, the internship coordinator for Desis Rising Up and Moving, an immigrant-, worker- and gender- justice rights project for working-class persons of South Asian and Indo-Caribbean descent. (Desis are Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who live outside those regions but closely identify with them.)

“[This] year’s youth internship program would be more important than all the other years,”  said Tami, explaining how he approached this year internships. They might be even more critical at a time when many of those served by his organization are facing evictions, job losses and other difficulties right now, he added.

His organization’s youth empowerment project hired 30 summer 2020 interns for paid positions, learning community organizing, cultural history and fundraising. They also do outreach by asking community residents and undocumented immigrants if they need food or other kinds of assistance. This year, they worked two hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; last year’s interns worked four-shifts.

The adults of his organization have worked hard to keep the kids from getting bored and to make meaningful connections with each other, even though they are interning virtually.

“We try to have at least one small group discussion during every session which allows interns to talk to others who they previously have not had the chance to talk to,” Tami said, adding that he is using breakout rooms on Zoom.

For Brooklyn’s Manos, her current internship is “quite a contrast” to being one of one of 25 National Aeronautics and Space Administration interns, working and learning at the Bronx College Science Center last fall.

To optimize her virtual internship, Manos has become a lot more organized, she said. She uses a planner to separate her work life from her home life, while she is spending most of her time indoors.

Her schedule lists her 2 p.m., Monday through Friday log-in to Neoworld’s Zoom meeting.  For the first half-hour of a three-hour shift, she meets and gets the day’s to-do list from her advisor. For the next two hours, she digs into the work. For the last half-hour, she reports the day’s progress  to her advisor.

Aima Ali is not exactly an intern. But the Brooklyn Tech senior is getting paid to learn animation through a five-week, Neighborhood Network Opportunity summer program for high school students from areas hit the hardest by Covid-19. She’s learning virtually — while her two little sisters make lots of noise in the background.

Despite those and other drawbacks of being a young person, gaining new skills online this summer, Ali said she is grateful for how kind and supportive her instructors and advisors have been. “The world has been going through a lot the past few months and it feels nice to know the people have my back,” she said.

Internship coordinator Tami, of Desis Rising Up and Moving, said intern supervisors have had to be extra understanding this year. Some of his own interns sometimes don’t have enough wi-fi access to avoid bumping in and out of Zoom meetings.

“Regardless of what challenges we face,” Tami said, “we need to overcome them and continue building power in our communities, who are often left without leadership or representation when disasters happen.”