Will Paquin (COM’22), an advertising major, landed a summer internship that would have looked stellar on his résumé: working in marketing and sales at NBCUniversal. But after it was canceled, he wound up working for his dad’s vintage auto body shop. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi 

Student Life

Coronavirus Shifted Students’ Summer Plans, Sometimes Dramatically

The pandemic canceled internships, but encouraged students to get creative with their employment options

Advertising major Will Paquin landed a summer internship that would have looked stellar on his résumé: working in marketing and sales at NBCUniversal in Boston. He was planning to live with friends in Allston and commute into the city. But in mid-May, he found out the internship had been abruptly canceled, another setback of the coronavirus pandemic.

Without an internship and with a wide-open schedule, Paquin (COM’22) defaulted to the summer job he’s worked on and off since eighth grade—helping out in his dad’s vintage auto body shop in West Newton, Mass. “At the time I learned the internship was canceled, I was definitely feeling down, like I had all these great plans and that ended,” he says. “But I think overall I had a good experience. It taught me that nothing is set in cement until it finally is, and to not take things for granted. And I was also super fortunate that I could fall back to working with my dad and still make money.” Best of all, he recently found out he could work remotely at the original NBC internship this fall.

Internships are a necessity for college students, a way to pad a résumé for the inevitable job hunt. Many students whose promising internships suddenly went “poof!” amidst the coronavirus pandemic took solace in knowing that they weren’t the only ones affected, and then buckled down to come up with a Plan B to salvage their summer, and their résumés.

Glassdoor reports that more than half of the internships posted on its website were removed once the pandemic began and that actual internship hiring through the website fell 39 percent in April compared to a year earlier. While all industries were affected, travel and tourism were hit the hardest, with a 92 percent drop since March. Accounting and legal, computer software and hardware, healthcare, and retail were the fields with the most internship openings this summer.

When many College of Communication students learned they had lost their summer internships, the college’s administration quickly worked together to form COMLab, a student-led organization designed as a place where public relations, journalism, film and television, and advertising students can work together to come up with their own content. More than 100 students participated during the summer session.

Another student firm launched in the wake of the pandemic was Empath Worldwide, a pro bono communications group  started by 13 students and young alums from several schools, BU and Northeastern among them. It offers services like media relations, social media, event planning, and branding. Archelle Thelamaque (COM’21), Empath’s director of media relations, had secured an internship through the Kotcher-Ketchum Scholarship and Internship Program, a partnership between global communications firm Ketchum and COM that provides a paid internship and tuition assistance for Black students. But in April she found out that it had been canceled. 

By June, other students had contacted her about joining Empath. “I think that feeling of I don’t know when an opportunity as good as this is going to come around again, also coupled with the fact that we are just living in general uncertainty, was such a big push to go to Empath,” Thelamaque says. “I think we are all trying to turn adversity into opportunity and create these really memorable experiences where we get to explore our passions and cultivate our skills at the same time.”

Liz McCarthy (CAS’22) originally planned to stay in Boston for an internship over the summer. Instead, she moved back home to Texas and secured an internship as the social media and PR director for Born Global, an environmental nonprofit researching issues like solar panel efficiency and recirculating aquaculture. Born Global employed over 100 BU interns this summer, McCarthy says, and the team works under the leadership of Kimberly Samaha (ENG’89). “It has been tons of Zoom meetings, emails, texts, and sometimes [because of time differences between some team members] very late night FaceTime,” she says. 

Originally, Alexis Rinder (CAS’21) had summer plans that called for working at the Tsai Performance Center (a job that included housing) and an internship with Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Joe Kennedy’s US Senate campaign. She was forced to return home to California when the University went to remote learning and had to drop her internship. Instead, she became a volunteer for the campaign. She also had to nix taking the LSAT, and she spent May and June looking for new opportunities. “Fortunately, most internships had gone remote, so there were more opportunities, but with that, they became more competitive,” Rinder says. She finally secured a position as a marketing and political research intern at Voting Smarter, a position she still holds.

Tina Wang (CAS’21) was supposed to participate in Study Abroad programs, in Prague and then Shanghai, but both were shuttered. After scrambling and not being able to land a good internship, she opted to work for her family’s New Jersey restaurant instead. “We didn’t want to hire anyone from the outside, so I helped by doing deliveries and takeout,” she says. She ultimately did find an internship with HomeTap, an equity-sharing company that invests in homes in exchange for a portion of the home’s future value, and she’s  glad she waited for the right one to come along.

“You always hear how you have to get a good internship to get a good job, but during COVID was the first time I took it slow,” she says. “I was focusing on myself and that’s when I found a great opportunity. It’s a good life lesson.”

BU’s Center for Career Development blog urges students to still list those canceled internships on a résumé, as it shows future employers that they were offered the position, but it was rescinded for reasons outside their control.