After the first week of my internship, I'm feeling more confident and organized about the way I work. I've figured out an outline template to use when I'm starting a new article, and I've made myself a checklist of things to remember before I submit a piece: have I added a feature photo, tags, checked off the city I'm writing for, and so on.
I also had the chance to attend the Daily Hive's weekly team meeting, which they hold every Friday afternoon over Google Meet. It was good to put faces to the by-lines I see every day, and it definitely helped me feel less alone, as I've been doing all my work from home and only really communicate with my editors. I'm also glad that I got to hear what is expected of other writers and to learn from their mistakes, in a way; I saw what generally needed improvement, so now I know to keep it in mind in the future.
Looking back on my first week, I'm pretty happy with the work I've done so far. However, I find it hard to really make the most of a virtual internship: I don't have access to the whole team's Slack, so I can't just see if anyone else needs help the way I could if I was working at an office in person. There's also only so much work I can do remotely, and I think it's going to be hard to look for new challenges every day. Communication is also quite different from in-person work, and I haven't had any experience working with a team 100% virtually—at my writing job, since I still have to physically go to an office, I get to connect with my colleagues and I've met my superiors. I guess if this is going to be a new normal, it's a good thing I'm adapting to this new online environment.
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