Don't be that Guy

The revolving door of interns continually ushers in same two types of young professionals: the forgettable and the memorable. With so many interns beginning and ending simultaneously throughout a semester, it can be hard to stand out amongst your peers. Instead of wasting both mine and your time by throwing together some mind numbing guide about how to be a “great intern”, I’m going to discuss how I have managed intern to intern relationships.

Cramming people in any size room is a recipe for disaster, packing upwards of six ambitious know-it-alls, and I mean know-it-all, in a room that comfortably fits three and is confidently called the “mail room” is a guarantee that conflict will arise. Bumping into one another with ever subtle movement, the six of us have gotten to know each other rather quickly. There is little to no time to feel things out to see who you get along with, and who you don’t. Because of this, it is important to “not be that intern” and manage your relationships well.

Since I have been there, one intern was hired by another Senator, another will be hired any day now, and the others all go to Georgetown, so it's clear these people are going places. There are some I absolutely can’t stand and others I see myself being friends with for some time. With so many conflicting personalities, it can be tough to be the new kid. What I’ve learned having been the new kid is just simply, “don’t be that kid”. The kid who tries to fit in too soon, the kid who is too anxious to do something other then voicemails, the kid who just pisses everyone off. In closing, follow the lead of the interns who have been there the longest, lay low the first weeks and don’t complain about doing the dumb task because frankly they’ve done their time now you have to. That’s about it for me, so remember to don’t be that kid and you’ll have a good semester.

-James 

D.C. Doesn't Have to Change You

by Daniel Griffith 

Walking to work yesterday I left the house in a grumpy mood, and tired from the week. As I began to get closer to Union Station I stopped to think why I was even upset. And the truth is, I can’t tell you why I was mad, who I was mad at, or what about that morning was any different from my typical day. Never start your day like this.

Instead of walking the rest of the way to the metro and getting to work in a mad and sassy mood, I forced myself to sit in Union Station and think. Week 7 of my WAIP experience is coming to a close, and I’m sure the end will come even more quickly.  While sitting on the bench I fell into an old habit of “people watching,” and couldn’t help but make up funny backstories for each passing patron. After daydreaming for about 20 minutes, I snapped back to reality, and just like that I had a smile on my face.

One of the most important things about this experience is to never take yourself too seriously. Yes, you’re here to grow in many ways, but don’t lose the person you were when you came here. Never be afraid to embarrass yourself. You’re here to learn, and you’ll be surprised how many people want to help you along the way.

Homelessness in DC

Homelessness in DC

By Kara Spada

Homelessness is one of the issues that I have had the hardest time understanding while in DC. How can such a developed country allow for so many of its people to be living in the streets? As a middle class student I have never had the money to donate large amounts to help my community, but I have found various other ways to help out. After all, we are only as strong as our weakest communities.

Here in the States homelessness is a problem experienced daily for over 600,000 people. In D.C. alone there are 11,000 people living without the security of food and shelter. Moving here from Columbus, the homelessness was one of the biggest differences I experienced on a daily basis. Yes, I remember the few people waiting up and down high street selling papers to raise money, or yelling at students when they turned them away because they only took cash not food. But none of these experiences prepared me for what I was going to see in D.C.

On an average daily commute I pass roughly 10 to 15 homeless people sitting along the sidewalks and streets asking for money. I have seen people standing out with their children holding cups begging, and have even pets being used to attract more donations. I have passed women, children and families taking shelter over heating vents, and have even accidently walked into homeless camps hidden in the woods of the suburbs.As far as the danger homelessness can often cause, I have had roommates who have been assaulted by people living on the streets just because they didn’t have any cash on them, and have experience uncomfortable situations myself when I had nothing to offer.

Every time I see a person living on the streets I am overcome with a feeling of sadness, wanting to change the entire world just to help that person to be comfortable. I have spent a good portion of money (that I do not have) trying to provide food and necessities. Since we are students, and mostly unpaid interns, it is impossible for us to spare as much money as we would like to help those in need. Here is a list of 10 ways to help the homeless population in D.C. without spending money.

1 Volunteer  

Volunteering is a great way to help your community without donating money to an organization or giving money to people living on the street. You can  google Volunteering with the Homeless in D.C. and find a list of ways to get involved, or you can visit VolunteerMatch.com to find a list of organizations in need of volunteers. Gather some of the WAIPers for an early sunday volunteer project and grab breakfast as a group after!

Check out this Washington Post article for a list of 25 organizations in need of volunteers throughout the D.C. area

2 Advocate

Advocacy and outreach is the best way to spread the message of the need to end homelessness, and provide resources to prevent families from becoming homeless. Plenty of organizations need more voices to reach out to congress or attend meetings on the Hill so that our representatives understand this problem. Reach out to DC’s National Alliance to End Homelessness and find out how you can join them in their advocacy efforts. Their website is full of ways to get involved and even include advocacy updates and policy initiatives!

3 Donate old clothing

Are your parents coming to visit you while you are here? Have them bag up all of those old clothes so you can donate them to the homeless population while in D.C. You can find a Goodwill in the city, and you will be able to clean out your closet while providing for a good cause!

4 Smile and Respect

After a while of living around a larger homeless population it becomes easy to block them out and ignore them. Try not to forget to see these people as humans. I sometimes find myself ignoring them or walking out of my way to avoid them for various reasons. If someone asks you for money, be polite. There is no reason to completely ignore them (unless of course they are being rude or you feel threatened by them). Smile and let them know that you are a student and you have no cash, or if you do want to offer them something, offer to pick them up some food at a local convenience store. Granola bars, cups of soup, a bottle of water are all cheap options that can make a huge difference to someone who doesn’t have access to food and water. I have seen many people feel so grateful for these little things.

5 Educate

Learn about the causes of homelessness and inform others. Here is a Facts Sheets that includes information on causes, numbers, and special issues. Also check out the following sites to learn more about the problem of homelessness across the country and what organizations are doing to help.

• Annual U.S. Conference of Mayors Report on Hunger and Homelessness: http://usmayors.org/publications/default.asp
• The National Alliance to End Homelessness: http://www.endhomelessness.org
• The National Low Income Housing Coalition: http://www.nlihc.org
• The National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness: http://www.studentsagainsthunger.org/
• The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty: http://www.nlchp.org
• Homes for the Homeless/Institute for Children and Poverty: http://www.homesforthehomeless.com/
• National Health Care for the Homeless Council (Formerly The Better Homes Fund): http://www.nhchc.org/
• Universal Living Wage Campaign: http://www.universallivingwage.org
• To find out other ways to help homeless people: http://earthsystems.org/ways/list.html

FAQ

As a graduating senior spending my last semester in college as an intern in Washington, D.C., there is one question I have received more times than I can count since I arrived here seven weeks ago:

Why the $#@% are you spending your final semester in college away from campus? Do you hate fun? Do you have no friends? Did your parents force you come to come here?

Okay, so it’s really only the first part of the question that people usually ask. But I have to answer it probably three or four times a week. So I’d like to use this blog post as a means of rehearsing my answer for the next time I inevitably get asked why I would voluntarily choose to give up a semester  hiding from my responsibilities on High Street while I still can.

Here goes.

Ahem: “Great question, Sir/Madam, I’m glad you asked! I just simply adore learning and networking and working my tail off. I think I’ve really outgrown the whole carefree college lifestyle and am ready to take on more responsibility. Are you hiring? Please hire me.”

Okay fine, that’s probably not the best response. I’m still learning the whole “networking” thing.

But in reality, I’ve spent all 22 years of my life in Central Ohio. Sure I’ve traveled here and there, but I’ve never had the experience of living, working, and assimilating in a completely new city. At this time last year, I was planning on graduating in December (a semester early), and then presumably begin searching for entry-level jobs in Columbus. Looking back now, if I had graduated in December, one of my greatest regrets of college would be never taking advantage of OSU’s endless opportunities to experience more of the world than Columbus, Ohio – as precious as she is. The cultural spectacles, historical landmarks, and unbelievable human intelligence I encounter on a daily basis, all while being surrounded by buckeye pride right here in Washington, are more than enough to justify skipping out from my last hoorah on campus. Last weekend I saw a performance at a world-class Shakespeare theatre literally two blocks from my house. And hiding from my responsibilities in a Smithsonian for hours on end is easily more enjoyable than hiding from them on High Street. Oh and I guess it helps that I’m building a professional network, learning career skills, and figuring out how to be an adult while I’m here too. The prospect of graduating and finding a big kid job is slightly less terrifying, thanks to WAIP.

Please hire me

Adam White

Find Your Passion- and the Rest Will Fall into Place

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." --Howard Thurman

I think overwhelmed is an understatement when I reference to my first few weeks living in Washington. Between the hustle and bustle of meeting all the wonderful new people in my cohort, orientation, my first day of my internship, policy salons, study tours, reading, and so much more, the first two weeks here really blended together into one big memory of lots of new things, people and experiences. 

The weeks go by fast, and I think the reason we are here can get lost sometimes. However, the John Glenn College of Public Affairs' motto of "turn your passion into policy" cannot be more true than it is when living in D.C. We all, and not I'm not just talking about the awesome WAIPers, come to D.C. to pursue our passions, and one of the most beautiful things that I think about every day is how different our passions are. People fall into their passions in different ways. Some people have known what ignites their heart from the time they start walking, some people find it in the midst of middle school and high school, some people find it during the quick four years of college, and many people find it well after graduating. I like to think that everyone's passion grows and changes as we get older. 

Regardless of how you stumble upon your passion, D.C. is the place to come to pursue it. It is here that you can literally change the world for the better. Whether it be through policy, getting the information out there, getting in contact with the right people or some mixture of these plus a few more, D.C. is full of people who come here to make a difference. 

I know where my passion lies. I know what topics I could talk about for hours and not get bored with. I know where my eyes drift when I'm looking at the news. I know what subjects get me heated up because I feel so passionate about them. And that's all that I need. I have found my passion in life, and I know that the rest will follow because finding and chasing your passion cannot steer you in the wrong direction. 

Being in college, the future can be uncertain. Majors change, ideas of your dream job changes, the city that you would absolutely love to go to when you graduate changes. Nothing about the future is ever 100% certain. But when you find that one thing that really makes you come alive, you can be 100% certain that the future will fall into place when you pursue it.  

-Claire 

First Experiences

First Experiences

I chose these pictures for my first blog entry because they have come to symbolize what the WAIP program and my time in DC has come to mean to me. These three pictures were taken the very first Sunday all the Spring 2016 WAIPERs were together in DC, so they have deep significance. That first morning we all got up and did our own thing but when 11:00AM hit we all gathered together to take our inaugural tour of our new environs. We walked to eastern market taking in the sights and smells of our adopted city for the first time.  We explored for a bit until we decided to take the risk and made our way to the dreaded metro. We all bought tickets and not surprisingly knowing the good ol’ metro, some of us had trouble with that. Surviving the ticket debacle, we took the metro all the way to Georgetown where we walked around experiencing this historic, eclectic neighborhood.  Venturing down to the waterfront area, we passed the Washington Harbor ice skating rink and watched people of all ages and colors glide across the ice.   Then deciding we were hungry the group moved on to find some lunch. We stopped at a small falafel place and caught our breath while we enjoyed our meal and got to know each other.  After we finished we decided to get desert, some of the group went to Baked and Wired while others, myself included went to Georgetown Cupcake where I had one of the best cupcakes I have ever had. After satisfying our sugar cravings, the two groups split off and explored our adopted city. My group and I walked all the way back to our brownstone on Capitol Hill stopping along the way at the American History Smithsonian Museum and then onto the Washington Monument and The White House. We stopped at each of those places for a little bit just soaking in the atmosphere and history and then returned home to rejoin the others. It was a memorable first day.  We bonded as a group and were able to absorb some of the atmosphere of the city we would be calling home for the next four months.

These photos are special to me because they represent the first time I truly got to know the people that I would be spending the next semester with.  We were all new to the city and it was a fantastic day, full of new experiences, new people and strong ties being built. We started off as a group of strangers embarking on an exciting journey, all nervous and scared about this semester.   The fact that all of us were meeting each other for the first time, in circumstances outside our norm, to be honest gave me a case of “opening night jitters”.   I was worried that maybe we wouldn’t gel as a group or maybe I’d be an outsider. That first Sunday showed me that my worries and concerns were unfounded and this was the start of something special.

Personally I think these photos are a great representation of the start of my time in DC.  Most of these pictures are of tourist sights, and in the beginning that is exactly as I viewed myself, a tourist.  That feeling was understandable the first couple of days but now it is funny to reflect back on because today I feel like a true resident of DC and have gotten used to the uniqueness of the city. I have really come to like DC in the past few months and these pictures serve as a reminder of a time when I thought of myself as a visitor and not as someone who makes DC my home. It gives me a sense of pride and accomplishment that I have come so far in such a short amount of time. I no longer get confused by the metro or struggle to walk around the city.  I no longer think that people are staring at me as if I don’t belong.  After a month in this wonderful, vibrant city I feel like I do live here, that I’m part of the thriving heart of our nation and that is a feeling I definitely enjoy. 

-David