How Summer Internships Have Adapted to Covid-19

How+Summer+Internships+Have+Adapted+to+Covid-19

Students who had planned summer internships or sports camps are, like everyone, adjusting their plans.

To ensure participant’s safety, many summer internships are now remote. Charlie Pan, a college junior from the University of British Columbia, shared his new summer intern plan at Microsoft.

“My intern is influenced not only because of the health issue under the pandemic,” he commented, but “it is also changed because of the travel ban and visa problem. The border between U.S. and Canada is closed and my visa to go to the US during summer can not be approved.”

Instead of joining his fellow summer interns, Charlie said, “I have to work remotely from my home in Canada. I need to use Zoom and other online meeting tools to do team-sync-up with the coworkers in US.”

Charlie’s experience is a quite common. Students who are planning to take summer courses can also relatively easily adapt to remote learning as long as the technical issues are solved. However, for the athlete who plays team sports and plan to practice and improve, the impact of this summer will hit even harder.

According to Owen Fu, a rising junior on the varsity football team who plans to play sports in college, his summer plan is completely ruined by the cancellation of sports camps and scheduled practices.

“I was planning to participate in several football summer camps such as the Nike football camp at Milton [Academy] in [the] U.S. during this summer to be a better player and play my best football in my junior fall,” said Owen, a junior at the Williston Northampton school in Massachusetts.

“My junior year football statistics will be extremely crucial for the recruitment process and it is really pitiful that I cannot go to these camps this summer to improve,” he added. “Now I am planning to practice on my own and see if there might be any football camps open in late summer in China before my next season officially starts.”