DCSI-LCE Week 7: Back After a 4-week Hiatus…did you miss me?

Hey everyone,

Sorry I’ve been MIA for the last 4 weeks: it would be a huge understatement to say I have been busy with work, adventuring all over the District of Columbia, and closely following the World Cup.

Just for a quick recap, in these past 4 weeks in the workplace I: put the finishing touches on my AidData Fact Sheets for Haiti and Burundi, made maps of the infrastructure in the surrounding areas of the Foreign Affairs Security Training Center (FAST-C) in Blackstone, Virginia and the Foreign Law Enforcement Training Center (FLET-C) in Glynn County, Georgia, completed a 13-page report analyzing a Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact Agreement between Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique, and Niger, went to NASA’s Exploration Day on The Hill, attended extremely scintillating briefings and hearings in regards to Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, witnessed John Kerry release the State Department’s 2014 Trafficking in Persons report as I stood about 10 feet away from him, discovered that John Boehner is one of the funniest people I’ve ever had the privilege to meet (in terms of laughing with him, not at him), and wrote policy memos on U.S foreign aid to the Middle East-North Africa as well as U.S foreign aid reform in general.

Outside of the workplace, I: have been practicing the art of meditation, went to my first two Nationals games ever for a total of $5, attended Smithsonian Congressional Night at the Museum of the American Indian, received guided tours of Mount Vernon and the Pentagon’s 9/11 Memorial, experienced my first ever Pride Parade, watched the USA vs. Portugal World Cup game with the American Outlaws at the Laughing Man Tavern, had my first ever brunch and shopping excursion at Eastern Market, listened to Jazz In The Garden, and witnessed pandas (among other incredible creatures) doing goofy and adorable panda things at the National Zoo for the first time in twelve years.

But enough with the boring stuff. The real reason I find this blog post to be especially overdue is because I’ve been meaning to give the First Session Interns in our office, whom I had the pleasure of spending these last 4 weeks with before they went home to Tennessee, the biggest and most well-deserved shoutout that anyone could ever receive.

This is everyone in the First Session intern group with Senator Corker. From left to right it goes: Wes, Alizeh, Laura, Alicyn, Senator Corker, Me, Jenn, Zach, Natalie, Roe, and Rob.

Given the extremely limited information I had about dynamics with other interns in a Congressional office, and having known beforehand that these interns in our office were all from Tennessee and had been working together for 2 weeks before my I even had my first day, I was incredibly nervous about how we would all get along. All I wanted was to be able to peacefully coexist from them and have a merely professional, working relationship so as to get things done quickly and efficiently. The professionalism did happen, as we were able to quickly and efficiently work together to complete multiple projects for the State Department and in regards to the civil conflict in Burundi, but what also happened was something I only hoped would happen in my wildest dreams: we all became best friends! It all started on my very first day when Zach and Alicyn gave me the warmest of welcomes, invited me out to lunch at Hawk & Dove, and then afterwards invited me to go see the Jefferson and MLK Memorials with them.

This very first day set the tone for the rest of my time not only with Zach and Alicyn, but with the rest of the First Session interns in the office as well. We all showed a genuine interest in and took the initiative to get to know each other on a personal level, discovered that we had a lot of things in common and that we enjoyed each other’s company, and proceeded to spend a lot of time hanging out with each other both on and off The Hill. For instance…

And finally and most importantly, we gave Idina Menzel a run for her money by singing “Let It Go” from Frozen together

 

Not pictured: our tour of the National Archives nor the tradition of making every intern sing their college’s alma mater at Staff Meetings.

All in all, I just want to say thank you to some of the most professional, competent, genuinely friendly and overall fun people I’ve ever met in my entire life for not only welcoming me with open arms and including me in all of the activities we did together from Day 1, but for being the part of my internship that I have enjoyed the most in my first 5 weeks. Words cannot express how much I will miss you all. I hope our GroupMe never dies out and we all can reunite in person somewhere sometime in the near future. I wish you all the best in your endeavors this Fall and I hope you all remember to stay Candidly Plaid (teehee inside jokes =P)!

I hope everyone enjoyed reading and stay tuned for next week (I promise there will be a next week and not another 4-week hiatus)!

Love,

-Dom