Oh Hill Yeah

When the weather is nice enough, I pass the Supreme Court, Library of Congress, and the Capitol on my morning commute. Often, there is a protest or demonstration, a group of study abroad or primary school students, or a succession of dogs being walked that I walk past. If the weather is below 50 degrees or rainy, I cut through the sublevels of the Senate buildings and take the tram to the House side Even then, I pass by members of Congress when we are in session, or even more dogs when we are not.  And that is just the beginning or end of my day as an intern on the Hill, or we are colloquially called by local college kids, #Hillterns.

I work in the Democratic Caucus on the House side, which is both exactly and nothing like what I expected when I applied. Even on days where I had to be in the office at 6:30 am to set up breakfast for the Democratic Representatives that decide to attend caucus that day, I always am so confident that I picked the perfect internship. And let me tell you, there was almost a riot the day we did not have bacon. It is such a unique and humbling experience to chat with Members of Congress about their juice preferences or the government shutdown.

An experience that stands out so far was the night I was invited to the dinner at the Library of Congress Grand Hall the week of our infamous issues conference. After months of hard work and weeks of my own grueling efforts, we had to cancel our retreat at a resort in Maryland due to the impending government shutdown. The night before we were supposed to leave, the decision was made to nix the travel plans and attempt to host things at home. I won’t get in to how much more work was put in to making that happen because I bet you could guess. But, naturally, one of the options we had for our dinner with Preet Bharara was to host it at the Library of Congress. Sometime between standing two feet away from Nancy Pelosi, still in those iconic four-inch heels from her historic House-version-of-a-filibuster, examining cheesecake bites at the desert table with Joe Kennedy III, eating a meal next to the Gutenberg Bible and under hand tiled mosaics, and getting shushed by Chairman Joe Crowley (it was the table next to us, I promise), I realized that I was experiencing something that literally no one gets to do. I can’t even describe how excited I still am to have gotten to do that, even though we had to go back and work until 11 after dinner and the week after I had to deconstruct and recycle the 300+ binders we created for the trip. But I ate dinner next to the Congressional Black Caucus and Gutenberg Bible. It was worth it.

Long story short: I love DC, the Hill is so incredible, everyone likes bacon, and Rush WAIP. 

Mikayla Lee