Virtual internships: How they work at one PR firm

Or do they?

When we hired an intern from the University of Maryland at the start of the summer, it never occurred to me that we might continue our relationship with her when she returns to campus for her senior year.

When I was a student studying journalism at the University of Maryland in the early 1990s, an internship was as much a place to go as it was the work you did. I had two internships back then: one as a legislative aide to a state delegate and another as a jack-of-all-trades at a small advertising agency that handled America Online (we didn’t even know what it meant to “go online” back then).

As it turns out, the ability to work remotely is not a privilege reserved for full-time staff. Our intern came into the office three days a week, but offered to follow-through on certain projects that needed to be completed on her days off. A computer and access to the Internet made her physical location irrelevant.