Today I've been interning entirely from home. How is that possible, you ask? Well particularly with fashion journalism its extremely easy and often more convenient. Normally I get sent a list of tasks to do, which could be anything from picture research to writing trend reports, I complete them and then email them back, simple.
Interning from home is great in some ways, you get to sit at home in your pyjamas all day, you don't have to pay for travel into London and you can work at your own pace, yet it also has a lot of downsides. One of these I felt the true force of today. As one of the fashion people I intern for is away at the Bread and Butter trade show in Berlin I was given the task of writing some trend reports from home for her. I completed the tasks last night and felt happy in the knowledge I could upload them to her idisk in the morning and have a free day to myself - joy! However things weren't as easy as they seemed. Every time I tried to upload the file it said there was an error and after a good few hours of constant trying, internet researching and turning my pc off and on again I still couldn't figure out what was wrong. Eventually the woman gave me a contact who helped me fix the problem but I couldn't help thinking this never would have happened if I'd have been in the office with her!
If your not a computer whizz then interning from home often leaves you stuck with weird pc problems, which can be super frustrating yet normally have really simple solutions. If you were interning in an office these would fixed with a quick call to IT, but interning from home you have to figure it out the hard way. This is all good practice for the 'real world' but I do wonder if sometimes interning from home is necessarily the best option. Another key part of interning that you miss out on when working from home is building contacts. Office chit chat and conversations over morning coffee are vital in building bridges and connections, and I often feel like I'm missing out on this when the only communication I have with other people all day is via email. While I know you should take every intern opportunity you can I'm not sure if I've picked the right path by agreeing to do so much interning from home...
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