Problems Faced in a Virtual World: How to Combat

A problem that I have found during my internship revolves around communication. I think simply the nature of working remotely as a new intern has negatively impacted my ability to work to my maximum efficiency because 1- I am not familiar with my team’s working style and 2- working over the computer is far more difficult to gauge people’s feelings/tone/attitude,etc. A lot of times my boss will quickly message me about something to do but because it is virtual a lot of times I have clarifying questions or things are not very clear. As an intern, in the beginning I struggled to ask these questions because I did not want to feel like I was being annoying constantly pinging her, and especially the nature of communication remotely and hearing the sound of the text can be very disruptive, distracting, and annoying. So, sometimes I would simply not ask the question but this would lead me to make mistakes which was counterproductive and took far more time than simply asking the question. I’ve learned as I continue that asking clarifying questions is okay and is what I should be doing so that I don’t waste time trying to guess what I am supposed to do. If this was an in-person experience, asking these questions would be so natural in conversation, wouldn’t feel as formal, and would take a maximum of 30 seconds. This can be particularly tricky to read when it is hard to tell one’s tone over messaging versus having real conversations with people.

I had the opportunity to go into the office for two days and the difference between working virtually and in-person was like night and day. I found that just in those 2 days it was so much easier to brainstorm ideas with co-workers and productivity was much higher. Working with my boss, I was able to talk out my ideas, take leadership, and she could really see the way I think rather than trying to communicate complicated ideas via Microsoft Teams. I expressed some of the communication issues I’ve been feeling with my boss, and she agreed that the nature of working remotely can hinder productivity, especially on some of the projects I am working on which involve lots of ideation and content creation. Since then, I’ve suggested having weekly one-on-one zoom meetings so that we talk things out over zoom and discuss naturally instead of constantly pinging each other. This has been an effective way in resolving this issue, and since then I’ve been a lot more confident in my ideas and asking questions. Overall, I think a big part of an internship is the in-person experience: getting to know people, learning how to be a good communicator, etc., and a lot of that is stripped from working remotely especially at the start of your career. However, the work environment is changing and this is a challenge that everyone is adapting to and is understanding of. Overall, I’ve found that working remotely requires much more clarity because this can oftentimes be lacking when working through the computer.