Summer’s Hottest Accessory? Going Into the Office

By Stephen Chmelewski

After the spring semester ends, final exams are over, and students flee IAB, many of us will be embarking on a new professional chapter of our lives—whether that be a short-term internship or a full-blown adult job. (Kudos to anyone who has successfully secured either, and you got this to anyone actively on the hunt!) 

As we settle into our new roles, I have a call to action for my fellow Seeples: Let’s go into the office this summer. You heard me. Let’s put on nice pants, pack a lunch, take the subway, and spend the day working in-person with our new colleagues. 

To clarify, I’m not advocating going into the office five days a week. I’m not even suggesting going in most days. Just one or two days of the week are a great place to start. 

Even still, I can already hear the collective gasps and groans. Trust me, I get it. It is undeniably less convenient to go into a place of work than it is to type away from the comfort of your apartment. Home is where the couch is, after all. 

So why put forth such a proposition? 

Because I’m not asking you to go into the office for your employer, for your supervisor, or even for your work friends—I’m asking you to do it for yourself. By choosing, on your own accord, to leave your humble abode and spend the day working from your organization's office, you’re doing yourself a number of favors, whether you realize it or not. 

We humans need in-person connection for our well-being and social health; going into the office affords us the opportunity to be in community with others. We don’t have to buy into the corporate, your-team-is-your-family mindset to recognize that it sometimes feels nice to be in the same room as people with whom you’re working toward a shared goal. Also, at least in my experience, working from home day after day can be quite isolating. Moving between Zoom meetings, Slack messages, and Google Docs in the solitude of one’s bedroom gets lonely quickly. While posting up in coffee shops with a laptop can be nice, it gets expensive—especially in the cities that I imagine many of us plan to spend our summers in. 

Admittedly, the workplace social scene will not always be poppin’, or even pleasant. There will be boring lunches. Forced small talk. Coworkers who refuse to turn down their podcast. But hear me out: That’s okay. Those are the experiences through which we grow. In those everyday moments, we learn to navigate new interpersonal dynamics, to sit with ambiguity, and to ask for what we need. Those are skills that will serve us not only in our nascent careers, but also in our lives outside of work. 

Beyond giving you an excuse to hang out with people who are Not Your Roommate, in-person work provides excellent opportunities for your professional advancement. For one thing, literally showing up can make you better known to your team and to your organization’s leaders. Discussing last night’s Mets game with the VP of Operations in the elevator may not feel like career growth, but those quotidian conversations allow for genuine professional relationships to develop. And as any LinkedIn influencer can tell you, relationships can help get you assigned to interesting projects and open doors to higher-paying, more fulfilling roles. 

Even with these benefits of going into the office, working in-person may not make sense for you, and that’s okay. You may find IRL work to be far too distracting, or perhaps your organization’s office culture is unhealthy or unsafe—I wouldn’t go in then, either! Nor am I faulting anyone for working from home. SIPA students have full, complex lives. Folks have children to care for, friends to check in on, dogs to look after. Spending eight hours of your Tuesday in a WeWork might simply not be feasible.

But if you’re in the position to do so, I invite you to give it a shot and see how it feels. Yes, going into the office can feel onerous, but it can also grow your social circle, get you out of your comfort zone, and jumpstart your post-SIPA career. Sometimes offices have free snacks and ping pong tables, and honestly, that’s pretty cool too.