Happy Columbus Day, everyone! I survived week three and am enjoying a cupcake from Crumbs on my "day off" (no internship today, but I still had class).
I visited Charlottesville, VA the day after my last post. I got to tour Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's estate) and the University of Virginia. Although it was cloudy and cold, Virginia was still beautiful and I loved Monticello.
The University of Virginia was beautiful as well - I toured Jefferson's "academical village" and the Rotunda. I attempted to find the law school during our lunch break, but didn't have any luck. Also, fun fact: some of the university's high profile students get to live right on the lawn in Jefferson's original buildings, in the footsteps of Woodrow Wilson and Edgar Allan Poe!
Week three of my internship was a mix between being insanely busy/working on multiple projects at once and doubt/boredom. There's an expectation that once an intern gets settled in, he/she will find a long-term project to work on. An exemplary intern's project will be self-motivated and something that he/she noticed about the organization that needs to be done or could be improved. At the very least, a good intern needs a long-term project that contributes something substantial to the organization. I've worked on a lot of projects so far - and they were all important and needed to be done - but I haven't found anything long-term to do yet. My longest project so far has a duration of 1-2 weeks. I'm really pressuring myself to seek out more to do so that I can make a larger contribution in the office, but it's hard to do when I'm surrounded by such impressive people and in an organization as large as the Department of State. I feel like my presence in the office is helpful but not crucial, so that's something I definitely want to fix over the next couple of weeks.
After a crazy day of work on Friday (with absolutely no downtime), I was definitely ready for the weekend! I toured the Capitol on Saturday and visited the Library of Congress. I've seen both of those buildings before on a previous trip to DC, but they still impressed me as much as they did four years ago.
I visited Charlottesville, VA the day after my last post. I got to tour Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's estate) and the University of Virginia. Although it was cloudy and cold, Virginia was still beautiful and I loved Monticello.
The University of Virginia was beautiful as well - I toured Jefferson's "academical village" and the Rotunda. I attempted to find the law school during our lunch break, but didn't have any luck. Also, fun fact: some of the university's high profile students get to live right on the lawn in Jefferson's original buildings, in the footsteps of Woodrow Wilson and Edgar Allan Poe!
Week three of my internship was a mix between being insanely busy/working on multiple projects at once and doubt/boredom. There's an expectation that once an intern gets settled in, he/she will find a long-term project to work on. An exemplary intern's project will be self-motivated and something that he/she noticed about the organization that needs to be done or could be improved. At the very least, a good intern needs a long-term project that contributes something substantial to the organization. I've worked on a lot of projects so far - and they were all important and needed to be done - but I haven't found anything long-term to do yet. My longest project so far has a duration of 1-2 weeks. I'm really pressuring myself to seek out more to do so that I can make a larger contribution in the office, but it's hard to do when I'm surrounded by such impressive people and in an organization as large as the Department of State. I feel like my presence in the office is helpful but not crucial, so that's something I definitely want to fix over the next couple of weeks.
After a crazy day of work on Friday (with absolutely no downtime), I was definitely ready for the weekend! I toured the Capitol on Saturday and visited the Library of Congress. I've seen both of those buildings before on a previous trip to DC, but they still impressed me as much as they did four years ago.
The Capitol:
Library of Congress:
Sunday the temperature dropped to 50 degrees (which wasn't fun considering it was sunny and 80 degrees on Thursday), but instead of staying inside and avoiding the cold, rainy weather I decided to go shopping! I attempted to take the Metro to Wheaton, MD to visit their mall, but there was construction on the Metrorail tracks so the 35-minute trip up to Wheaton turned into a 90-minute trip. Ouch. At least I got to take advantage of the Columbus Day sales! I am hoping to go shopping again in the future (although hopefully it won't be an all-day adventure) - there are a lot of stores in DC itself, although Connecticut Avenue and Georgetown are a bit more expensive (as is Pentagon City) so for affordability I would still recommend trying Wheaton.
As the weather gets colder, I'm really starting to miss California autumns. Luckily the beautiful colors make it worth it! I'm hoping to walk around the monuments sometime soon to see all the fall colors - hopefully it will be warmer than 50 degrees though.
(I decided to comment here instead of replying on facebook because blog comments are fun!)
ReplyDeleteIt looks like you're getting to see lots of really cool things (Library of Congress and Monticello!).
What sorts of projects do you work on? (Are you even allowed to tell me without killing me?)