Virtual Internship Stories: Joon Yong Choi

September 14, 2020

Name: Joon Yong Choi
School: Teachers College
Major: International Comparative Education
Center: Santiago
Internship: Research Intern at CGC | Santiago

Introduce yourself! What’s your name, major, and where are you interning this summer?
My name is Joon Yong Choi, I’m a graduate student at the Teachers College, and I’m currently interning with the Global Center in Santiago, Chile.

Tell us a little bit about your internship. What are some of your daily responsibilities?
So the topic that we are talking about or doing our research on is the geopolitical and economic trends of Covid-19, which is kind of what everyone is talking about right now, so it’s been pretty busy. Besides our 1-2 meetings a week it’s kind of designated by ourselves, how we manage our time and space. Every Monday at 9 we have our weekly meeting, it takes about an hour, we go over the new content for the next week. And then after that meeting, I actually have another internship this summer with the UN, overseeing interns there, so that takes up a big chunk of my time as well. I can’t speak for everyone else, but my specific times tend ot be pretty heavily loaded - in a 5 day work week, I spend about 20-30 hours depending on what the deliverables are for that week.

How does this compare to a more typical internship or research project?
Like everyone else who has had internships in office, I’m used to that - where if you're working in a team you don't have to shoot them an email, you can just holler across the hall and then they'll be right there, so that's one big difference that’s impacted team collaboration.

Why did you pick this internship?
Specifically what stood out about the Global Center in Santiago was talking about research around covid-19 and how that would impact the global international stage. That’s very broad, but international relations was what I studied a lot in undergrad, and I wanted to use that this summer, and in the current context I felt like it would be outstanding to be able to do that.

What advice would you give to other virtual interns?
Be as tech fluent as you can - depending on the specific internship it's going to require you to be as communicative as possible, whether that be gmail or slack or whatever it may be. And then just be flexible- your day today schedule is going to be wack and kind of be all over the place. I feel like supervisors have every right to kind of hit you up now that we’re in quarantine at sort of anytime, and so, just be aware of that. And then also, specifically with Columbia Global Centers, language is a big thing. For my virtual internship, spanish is a requirement.

Do you have any book recommendations? What about music, movies, podcasts, or TV shows?
Because I’m a teacher, and because of everything thats going on with racial inequality I’ve been reading a lot about that. Some more fun podcasts I’ve been listening to - I’m a big soccer fanatic, I’ve been playing and watching and following my whole life - so there’s a podcast on Spotify We are Football, and that really takes my mind away from everything going on right now. For TV shows, my childhood show just premiered on Netflix, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, so of course have to binge those, and I’m Korean, so a lot of the Korean TV shows on Netflix that have come up I’m also really into. And for music, anything Anderson Paak, love that guy he’s really good.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Is the tie between my grandmother's house in Korea or back to Boston, where I went to undergrad. I think if I had to choose I would probably go to Korea, because it’s my hometown. 

Is there anything else you would like to say?
Wash your hands, wear a mask and stay inside, because I would love to get out of my apartment more often.