Serendipity: A Summer in Washington, D.C.: The Intern Life

Alright this post is probably going to be a long one. I want to keep this blog interesting so I'm going to post after a few days of interesting things have happened and then I'll update it.

So I finished my first week at the office. The main thing that I've learned is the extremely unique life of an intern on Capitol Hill. Whether you're trying to figure out what to eat for the precious hour you get out of the office for lunch, trying to come up with new ideas to contribute to the office, answering a "concerned citizen" call, or just trying to get through the long work day, there is always something to complete. I overheard one intern from a different office saying, "Gosh I bet it's a beautiful day outside, but I only know fluorescent lighting..." I thought that was pretty funny. It is tricky trying to get the most out of the work day and then work in D.C. site-seeing. But I'm going to make the most of my weekends for sure. By the time I get home from work I just want to curl up and sleep but there's so much to see! Oh, I've also learned that as an intern, you will do anything anyone tells you because you want to do everything right, even though that's pretty much the opposite of what an intern does haha. One of my fellow interns said, "the janitor could come in here and we would clean a bathroom if he told us to." So true. We also got to dress casual this week because the Senate was not in session (not all offices allow this) and one group of girls passed us and said, "wow, is it casual wednesday?" We didn't even care, we were so glad to be in dressed down. I've also gotten so many tours of the Capitol. As interns, we give constituents tours. I'm excited to be trusted to give people historical information because we've been told plenty of people just make things up. I'm going to try hard to give very accurate tours but hope that no one asks me any questions...haha. My favorite part of the Capitol is the whisper effect in the statuary room. When they did construction on the Capitol they raised the floor and rebuilt the ceiling so now if you go across the room and talk into the floor, people can hear what you're saying as clear as day on the other side! It's really cool. I also loved seeing the Senate chamber. All the desks are passed down from senator to senator and they sign their names inside! And there are candy desks for the senators on the democrat side and the republican side.

In terms of my office duties I've definitely got filing faxes down. Everything else is going to need more practice. Especially phone answering. My listening skills are coming in handy though. The hardest part is wanting to help, but since I represent the Senator and I'm only an intern in D.C., I have to stay professional and try to help from where I'm at even though most calls are from Arkansas and I can't always help. I really do enjoy helping out with everything around the office. I'm always trying to be useful. I'm learning a lot and have so much more respect for people who work in politics.

Yesterday I had so much fun running around D.C. We went to the Nationals game against the Rangers and it was awesome! We got $5 tickets and sat in the nose-bleed section but we were in the shade and it was great. The Nats killed the Rangers 10-2 and had some great home runs. It was such a gorgeous day yesterday and we've had some pretty crappy weather all week so I really wanted to be outside. My boyfriend, who is also interning in another office, went walking with me. We walked from the ballpark all the way to the Jefferson Memorial and back to our apartments. We went to the Botanical Gardens which were gorgeous. I saw so many different types of plants and apparently the idea is so that if a plant gets wiped out somewhere they can use the buds from these plants to regrow them. We also went to the Smithsonian Native American Museum which was very interesting and housed in a gorgeous building. Then we saw the Jefferson Memorial (gorgeous!), the FDR memorial (extremely well done), and the MLK Jr. memorial (amazing). We also saw two weddings on our walk that were both very pretty. It was a really wonderful day to be in D.C. and I definitely made the most of it!

Enjoy the pictures! It was good to take my camera out :)