What I Think: Remote Internships

So last summer I had this fantasy that I could stay at home all summer, yet still intern. These false hopes stemmed from the hours I spent searching on Internships.com browsing remote internships. I applied for a bunch and I ended up getting one a few days later. It was going to be great I screen-shot-ed the email that congratulated me on being chosen as an intern for an event planning company and sent the news to my parents.

I couldn't be more excited it wasn't a paid internship, but I would earn college credit and all I had to do was write! Imagine an entire summer spent at home doing something I love? I could choose my own hours, sleep late, plan vacations, anything! That sounded great. I think I've mentioned my anxiety a time or two on here so that's why the thought of never being forced to leave my house sounded perfect.

The summer started and I made it a few weeks in struggling to complete my assignments because the directions just weren't clear. By the end of the third week I had to drop out, the whole remote aspect just wasn't working. Obviously it is pretty difficult to teach and communicate with interns solely through email or over the phone, but this was downright awful. I have never felt so lost/ stressed out ever. Not a fun summer.

So after dropping that I quickly found another. This time it was a paid internship for a blog. All I would have to do is research and write articles for the blog to start and then gradually I would learn about SEO and marketing. Awesome. I wrote a lot for them and I published a few posts which are still up now!! (I'm not going to link them because this is kind of an anti-remote internships post)

This was going well for a few weeks until I realized I wasn't going to be paid or get college credit. The person in charge (my boss I guess?) stopped e-mailing me after awhile so that was the end of that.

While my experience has been pretty poor with online internships, that doesn't mean you're guaranteed to have a bad experience. Before getting yourself into this you definitely should be prepared to be challenged and not necessarily have an easier experience just because it's on your own time.