Week 9 Blog Question-How Are You?
Team,
I know many of you are continuing your internships only slightly interrupted/delayed, which is great!
Beginning next Monday, we'll continue onward with the schedule I sent out shortly after we learned we were moving to the online format. (I'll also try to send a reminder email on Monday.)
ALSO, The university has asked us to reach out to you with a low stakes activity to be completed by April 5.
For now, our low stakes activity can simply be our blog post.
Question: How has your internship been impacted as a result of the coronavirus? Have your responsibilities shifted? Have you moved your work online? What accommodations have you or your site director made to try to continue the experience as best as we all can? Is there any upside? Any new skills acquired in the process?
On a personal note, hang in there. I feel like I'm saying that a lot lately. This is a difficult time, no doubt about it. I'm hoping we can all do our best to make the most of this experience, at least.
Much of our remaining coursework involves Michelle's modules, blog post updates, and your internship work. Of course, we also want to have a look at your resumes and your Linked final assignment. Plenty more to come.
Also, please encourage your classmates to apply for an internship! Deadline is April 8. Here's the link: https://www.uwec.edu/academics/college-arts-sciences/departments-programs/english/explore-opportunities/internships/
Under "List of Current Internships" they'll find a linked file ("English Internship Information Packet") which clarifies the process. Thank you for your help here. You are the most direct line to next fall's students. I really need your help here.
As always, I am here to help. Looking forward to hearing from you on this blog post by April 5!
BJ
My internship with Volume One has, more or less, been entirely affected by the coronavirus. Since the magazine is based entirely around local events, which are now being cancelled due to gathering restrictions, social distancing practices, and other health/safety precautions, there isn't a whole lot to write about anymore. Thankfully, the V1 team is pretty resilient, and they've transitioned to working from home to keep each other safe.
ReplyDeleteI'm lucky that they're still willing to offer me stories to write even though I'm now at home in Appleton for the rest of the school year. I just had a "checking in" email discussion with one of my site supervisors who told me that the staff is now working three days a week from home, and will probably be skipping the next print issue in favor of continuing to upload articles online, where they will be most accessible for most people.
One of the main duties I was planned to have had with my internship in this specific semester was working on the annual "Eat Scene" issue of V1. It's a compilation of every restaurant in the Chippewa Valley, and gives the community a brief overview of each place and what they can expect when they eat there. Given the changes restaurants are going through right now, this project is obviously on hold. However, my supervisors may allow me to write a piece on the online learning changes that students (of all ages) are enduring, which I think would be really interesting and cathartic, in a way, to write, so I do have that to look forward to. Mainly, I'm just glad that they're still letting me help out, because I've really enjoyed my time with V1 so far, and would have hated for it to end as abruptly as some other things have.
Fortunately, I have been working on adding content to the Honors’ website, creating a newsletter and developing a survey for alumni to fill out. I can continue to do a lot of my work at home, but I was getting close to sending out printed materials and surveys to get alumni to come to campus, but that is not a viable option anymore. We’re going to have a staff meeting this Thursday to discussion specific plans further. Everyone I work with has been incredible and flexible through all of this, especially since this impacts them a lot more than me. They spend most of the year working on programming for the Provost’s Honors Symposium and now they have to readjust everything.
ReplyDeleteOn the bright side, I’ll still be getting more comfortable using software like InDesign and Photoshop which are useful skills to be able to put on my resume. While my laptop isn’t running the software flawlessly, it works well enough and I’ll have plenty of time to practice using it.
I currently don't have an internship anymore because of the coronavirus, so that sucks. Corporate made the decision to get rid of all of their interns for safety reasons and I understand. I've been in contact with the supervisor at Volume One, so fingers crossed I'll be able to continue an English Internship this semester.
ReplyDeleteIt's been a rough few weeks mentally. I started to calm down once I realized that most of my coronavirus related anxiety was the result of the widespread online panic and not the virus itself.
ReplyDeleteMy entire desk space is now home. Somehow I was able to make the space in my tiny bedroom. I am incredibly fortunate that Realityworks chose to keep me on; I think they actually did let some interns go so I do feel for them in a way. To be a college student with a job right now is quite a privilege.
As of last week the entire building has shut down and everyone is working remote.
I miss having a physical space to go to work. I struggle with being productive when I have 3 guitars within arm's reach and Froot Loops in my cabinets.
My internship has not really been too impacted by the coronavirus as I was already working mostly from home online. I can no longer meet my advisory in her office twice a week like I used to, but we regularly communicate via email. Also a lot of JONAH events have been cancelled so there are less of those which I can attend.
ReplyDeleteCurrently I am working on the JONAH newsletter and a lot of the focus is the coronavirus. It has been more difficult talking to sources for the articles as most do not want to meet in person. So I have been doing a lot of phone calling and emailing.
I have been gaining a lot of skills updating the website and working with the databases that JONAH uses as this is one of the things, I am able to do at home. I have also gained more online communication skills as I have to be timely in responding to emails.
The only upside I can see from this switch is that I’ve had a lot more time to focus on my internship since school is switching online. Also I have been able to attend a lot more of JONAH’s meetings as they are online.
My internship work is all going to be online and at home now. Fortunately, my supervisor has been great about sending my email updates each week and checking in. Unfortunately, I haven't done much work for my internship these past couple weeks because I've felt so lost without my classes and campus routines to keep me structured and focused. Most of my internship work will remain the same, and right now I'm (supposed to be) working on website updates and writing press releases. With the move to online classes, I can no longer meet with the students to help them edit their research articles, but we've decided that they can email me their articles and I will still review them and send them some feedback. As for publishing our research journal, we're not sure if/when Printing Services will be available, but we've been looking into publishing online. As our classes resume again next week, my biggest challenge will be to set aside enough time for me to complete all my internship work and all of the assignments that are now due.
ReplyDeleteI am doing better now than I was at the beginning of all this. Not only was I personally hit hard by the cancelling of classes, but I lost a close family friend, my internship decided that the interns would be safer at home so we were let go, and my jobs decided the same thing. However, for the past three weeks I have been slowly healing and adjusting to the new changes, and am happy to say I am getting there. This has taught me a lot about adapting, and overcoming major obstacles, when I have only really ever dealt with minor ones.
ReplyDeleteWhile I no longer work at WEAU, I am excited to restart with the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild in interviewing authors. I feel I can learn a lot through this internship and it is much more focused on my field of English than WEAU was. I am excited about what's to come, because I feel like I have more hope to look forward to.
There has been a slight, though not an extreme shift due to the Coronavirus. Our responsibilities now will be posting on social media platforms. Our postings will likely not be too different since we mainly posted digitally before. The greatest difference will be that all communication will have to be done online. This will be a bit of a challenge/tester of new skills because I prefer to meet people face-to-face. Being part of a two-person intern team, we often met up to discuss bigger pieces and how we wanted to delegate roles. We will now have to find a new way to communicate. Also, if I wanted to interview someone, meeting in person allows me to improvise a little bit and know where to push questions and where to back off. Sometimes the most vital information comes not directly from a person’s response to a question but the further conversation the sprouts from it. Communication being strictly online will be a bit of a challenge for me, but will hopefully allow me to become more tech savvy for the future!
ReplyDeleteWhile I personally haven’t experienced any major changes in my role as a Guild intern, the organization itself has seen quite a bit of shifting in recent weeks. I think one of the toughest changes for this organization is that in-person events are no longer possible, at least for a while. This is difficult because the Guild really strives to build meaningful community between local writers, and in-person events have been a major component of that. However, I’m excited by some of the new adjustments that have already taken place! The online hope series has been inspiring and has stirred up lots of interest. I also look forward to learning more about what a (likely online) modification of the Priory Writers Retreat may look like, and how that will affect a potential piece I’ll be writing for the website.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, I’m thankful that much of my work as an intern was already online, so I’m able to proceed with almost all of it, with some slight modifications. I think this experience has helped me become more flexible. It’s also been a good reminder that organizations and people (from prestigious authors to interns) are people, and sometimes need breaks. Sometimes things come along to interrupt the normal flow of things, and that’s okay. We hopefully become more adaptable and resilient as a result. On another note, having a virtual team meeting was a helpful step for me, and I now feel ready to dive back into some exciting projects as we move forward!
My internship has become a lot more complicated due to the coronavirus—for the most part, my internship consists of conducting interviews and writing articles for the English Department as well as managing the Facebook page for the department. Since my work was mostly online, that part of my internship hasn’t changed, but conducting interviews in an online format generally yields much slower responses and lengthens the process of writing articles and even putting those articles together. In terms of social media, we were mostly using the page to advertise English Department events and promote classes or releases, but with the virus affecting events in that most have been canceled, it’s much more difficult to consistently post fresh content on the page. My site director has been very accommodating and we’ve discussed pushing back deadlines on our articles and maybe posting less on our social media. I think I mostly feel a lot of stress and more pressure due to the changed circumstances of the internship, and I feel a bit guilty for not keeping the same pace I was before this situation transpired. I’m still dealing with how to carry out the duties of my internship in a timely manner, and I think I’m going to have to be more proactive in the future in order to meet my deadlines.
ReplyDeleteMy internship has become a little trickier, no doubt, but thanks to the amazing efforts of my site director, things are staying very much on course. The article-writing side of the internship was entirely online anyway, so as far as that aspect goes very little has changed.
ReplyDeleteThere are greater challenges that this pandemic has posed to the internship, however; the biggest change is that upcoming guild events have been cancelled or moved online, and adjusting to that promises to be an interesting challenge. I'm not proficient with technology in general, and I have exactly zero experience with managing online events, so finding ways to help out with such things will prove to be an interesting challenge.