Saturday: After a morning spent lounging around
the house pretending to accomplish, and occasionally actually accomplishing
work, Olivia, Elvis and I headed over to DC Pride for their parade. Pride, for
anyone unaware, is an excellent excuse to try out the ridiculous eyeliner ideas
you've been pondering. I've got 99(+) problems, but owning colorful eyeliner is
not one of them. The parade itself was a blast, despite failing completely to
find any of the other WAIP people while we were there, we made friends with some
slightly tipsy, slightly older yo-pros. One of them was kind enough to pass
along some of the bead necklaces she caught. We were thoroughly well decorated
by the time we had to leave behind the promenade of floats and supporters so
Olivia and Elvis could make their dinner reservation, a mere two hours into the
parade. I met up with Shelby and Kennedy and we struck out for Chinatown to
revisit Chinatown Express. It was just as tasty as last time, although this
time I tried their in-house made noodles rather than dumplings. They come in
broth, but I opted for fried this time around, with pork as my meat de choix.
This leaves me wiggle room to go back and try them in the broth sometime.
Muhaha.
Sunday: In addition to my usual pilgrimage to
whole foods, I got to meet my mentor for the first time this afternoon. She's
very nice, works for IBM in defense contracting, which probably isn't a career
path I'll follow, but she does provide a classic out-of-Ohio example to follow.
Also real estate advice (Virginia not Maryland, no offense to any Maryland
residents out there). I, with my usual grace and aplomb, arrived for our
meeting drenched literally to the skin. Next time I'm running late-ish and
think I can still make it on the metro rather than take and uber, I'm just
going to take the uber, because clearly the universe took offence to my
confidence, and also probably the fact that the metro was functioning properly.
On a weekend no less.
Monday: At the end of this week, we will
officially be halfway through our time in DC. After this it will be counting
down the weeks, rather than totaling them up. In the meantime though, we're
looking at a packed week. Monday started us out on a fortunately fairly easy
grade, although those of us in Prof. Gaspar's class had our second and final
five page paper due in class today. Mine is a analytical discussion of US
foreign policy in regards to Iran during the Obama Administration's first four
years. Which is a complicated way of summing up an even more complicated issue.
Yay. Class was interesting as per the usual, lots of policy discussion, lots of
that stretched-brain feeling you get after a good discussion. Also drones are
controversial. In case anyone had missed that.
Tuesday: Today, like all other Tuesdays, I went
to work! After work I came home, pretended not to be broiling alive in my work
clothes, and headed back out again to my policy paper one on one meeting with
Prof. Gaspar. That went well, he was
able to point out a couple of research avenues I hadn't thought of.
Wednesday: The week is starting to pick up, not
that Monday and Tuesday weren't already busy. This morning we had constituent
coffee with Senator Portman (R-OH). It was interesting, though he chose not to
address any of the hot button topics going through Congress right now. Instead
he talked about his commitment to helping Ukraine, and in particular Crimea. He
took the time to ask us about our internships, we took the obligatory photo
(now trending on the Glenn College's twitter) and headed to work. Or, more accurately,
swam through the air to work. In a panicked fashion. Not only was it humid
enough for a fish to be content, I had to be at work by ten to watch a hearing.
I skidded in (almost) in the nick of time. Wednesday didn't end there though,
embracing Katy's 'yes intern' concept, one of the other interns and I cleaned
out the work fridge (gross). On the upside, we got to leave work half an hour
early, which came in handy since the WAIP-ers were all invited to the Ohio
Society's quarterly mixer. Held in Tortilla Coast it was furnished with free
food and acres of Ohio-ans. The food was excellent, and fried, and
cheesy…..yum! The alumni (from all over Ohio, not just OSU) seemed very
friendly, although mixing was limited since we were packed in pretty tightly.
Thursday: Brace yourselves for today. My calendar was sending me alerts before I
even woke up this morning, which is always nice and non-stressful to wake up
to. I went it in to work fifteen minutes early in order to get my press clips
and a memo done before I left for the State Department at 10. The State
Department gives what they call foreign policy classrooms where they bring in a
specialist and have them speak to the invited students about their specialty
(thanks to Katy for the invite). The talk was on cybersecurity when I was
there, which was interesting, in particular because he talked about how it
relates to our foreign relations (career goals anyone?). After the talk I raced
back to the office to make it in time for our intern lunch/informational
interview with Adam Ereli, the former US Ambassador to Bahrain. After the
interview I decided that I would like his life, thank you very much. He went to
Paris after he graduated and worked there for three years before coming back to
the US to go to grad school. After that he took the foreign service officers
test and joined up in their public diplomacy track. After 23 years as a FSO and
Ambassador he came back to the States and has been working in the public and
private sectors ever since. He gave out a lot of good advice throughout the
course of our lunch including the oft-overlooked reminder to be kind to
everyone, regardless of their current job rank or place of work. In the oddly
cutthroat/ supportive-to-those-you-know world that is DC, that’s a good thing
to keep in mind. Today didn't end with lunch though, we the interns worked
steadily through the afternoon, and were rewarded with office happy hour at
five (so we got to leave work an hour early). We went to Del Campo, where it
took me three tries to convince the bartender that, no really, I didn't want
any alcohol in my lemonade. Other than that, the food was amazing, we had yucca
fries, pork sliders, chicken sliders and steak-and-egg empanadas. I would've loved
to stay longer but I had to scamper out a little after six to make it over to
our policy salon of the week with Greg Schultz.
Greg is astonishingly down to earth for someone who works as a Senior
Advisor to VP Biden and Special Assistant to Obama. An Ohio State alumnus, he
initially wanted to go into teaching, but wound up in campaign work after he
expressed his ideas on improving campaigns in Ohio to a high up in the
Democratic Party in Columbus. This eventually led into helping on the Hillary's
Senate campaign, and from there to Obama's 2008 run for president. Just wow.
Friday: My alarm went off at some ungodly hour
like 6:45 (I've been on hiatus from my early running due to plague) so we could
make it out to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens by 9 to lend our soft little office
hands to service for the day. We got to suit up in some serious waders, grab
some rakes and hop into a pond. The pond had a delightful 12 inches of mud to
get trapped in and fall over into (not that I would know anything about that).
It also turns out the WAIP is terrible at de-turtle-ing ponds, we only fished
one out, but probably saw five. We were significantly better at removing
invasive water lilies from the lotus ponds fortunately. After a fun few hours
in the sun we broke for lunch with the park rangers and headed back into the
city, leaving eau de pond in our wake the entire way. After some serious
showering and restorative quantities of water Olivia and I walked over to Jazz
in the Garden in the sculpture garden on the Mall. We met up with a couple
other girls from our house and my fellow Mercury interns came over to meet up
after they got out of work. We're already talking about going again next week,
though there is jazz playing, its really more about the socialization, plus
there's excellent people watching!
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