My Internship

Hello again!

In the American Politics Program, Monday through Wednesday are class days while Thursday and Friday are reserved for internships, which means that for me, today was an internship day.

I took care of the usual stuff, getting in at around 8:45am I read some news and then started my day when the first member of my department came in at around 9:15am. Unfortunately, today was one of those days where it was pretty monotonous. I started my task at 9:15am, took lunch at 12:20pm and by the time I left at 5:15pm, I was about 2/3 done. Needless to say, it's a big, time consuming, task.

I'm really writing this blog to tell you about an opportunity I can't take, but which was presented to me. This is, as you know, an election year and the DNC is working hard to make sure Democrats hold on to all the seats they can, even though things aren't looking great, especially in the house. This means that some of the interns were offered the opportunity to be (as they call it) deployed into key states in the area for a final push before the election. I would love to tell you which state I was deployed to, but I can't because they didn't tell me! As I said, because of my class schedule I will be unable to accept the offer but the point is that I was offered this opportunity in the first place. How many college students can say they were deployed by the DNC to some state around the country to help secure seats in one of the most heated, bi-partisan elections we've seen in who knows how long? The answer, I'd wager, is not very many.

Opportunities like this are what the program is all about. The work you'll do in class is far above your actual class level in college. For example, in my program we are expected to write as first year graduate students while most of us are Juniors! In the same sense, in D.C. at-large, you're expected to take on tasks which you'll realize are not commonly given to people our age; you're asked to take on more responsibilities. For example, in my position in the HR department at the DNC, unrelated to politics though it is, I have nearly full access to the employee data base which means I have access to around 600 Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, families' names and addresses and so on... This level of privilege and trust isn't paralleled (as far as I can remember) by anything else I've done, except maybe overseeing the distribution of funds from my home school's student council (around $1 million total).

The point I'm making, and the point that I'll close on, is that I've come to realize that even if I'm not in the greatest internship I could have imagined, there are ups and downs and one of the ups is experiencing life as if I'm 5 or 10+ years older than I actually am... and I have to say, it's getting me pretty excited about real life!

That's all for now.

Check in later for more stories and things I've learned!