Journalism senior Sofiya Kryvych, who is an international student from Ukraine, is currently doing her second co-op at Wayfair as a Video Editor. This position is helping her navigate a field – production and entertainment – that she hopes to pursue after graduation. Since moving her co-op online, Sofiya has been adjusting to new workflows but has been able to stay creative and busy with new projects on-the-job. We caught up with her to learn more about her experience; learn more below.

1. How has your co-op changed since it’s moved online?

2. As we started working from home, I was worried that it would heavily affect our whole creative team and especially post-production, since most of our work depends on whether we are shooting new material.

4. But luckily, even though our workflow has changed, we still have a lot of ideas to execute and a lot of projects to work on.

6. We’ve changed our messaging to better address the current situation in the world and help our customers feel comfortable at their homes during these difficult times. Now as we are limited in terms of shooting new material, we are using more graphics and animation for our videos, and also using some of our old material and repurposing it addressing the current needs of the customers.

1. What digital tools is your co-op company using to keep everyone productive and on-the-same-page?

2. All the meetings that we have are video meetings, even though anyone is free to turn off their cameras whenever they want. I believe that doing video calls is much more productive, since not only it gives everyone a sense of social interaction but also makes us pay close attention to what others are saying. More specifically, we have a morning meeting when everyone is talking about their projects and what they are working on that day, and I also have a meeting with my immediate team at the end of the day, when we discuss any issues that we’ve came across.

Has there been anything unexpected for you as you transitioned your role online?

The only unexpected thing for me was that it would get this serious and nobody would know when we could start operating normally again. Other than that, the transition itself was smoother than I thought and our whole team was very productive and communicative from day one.

During this difficult time, how are you staying motivated and inspired?

I think it’s very important to be able to find and acknowledge positive aspects in everything that is happening today. Motivation simply doesn’t work when you focus on negativity and refuse to change your attitude. I just try to look at it as an opportunity to get to know ourselves more and spend our time doing things we’ve never had time for. I do a couple of things to stay productive: I write down a list of big goals every month and hang it somewhere, where I would often see it. I also have a lot of notes spreaded out next to my workplace with weekly tasks and I usually write my daily plan every morning. I set many alarms during the day to remind me to do certain tasks and I keep a daily productivity journal to track my small “accomplishments.” While I try to stay very organized, it’s important to mention that everything doesn’t always go as planned. It’s a frustrating time for all of us and it’s okay to get distracted or demotivated at times, but the key is to keep finding new sources of motivation every day.

Anything else you’d like to add?

For those of us on co-op right now, I think we should really focus on our experience and the ways to get the most of our co-ops.

Working for a company, big or small, and seeing how it operates in times like these is a huge learning opportunity for all of us.