First Day of Internship and First Day of Class

On Tuesday I had the first day of my internship and I was so nervous, but the day surprisingly went really smoothly! I got up at 6:30am and then left the house by 7:45am to get to work early! I'm SO glad I left early because I missed a subway that I was supposed to get on and also went the wrong way on 18th St. and got lost walking to the internship! But finally by 8:45am I got to the building and just waited in the receptionist area for my supervisor to pick me up! She picked me up and then had to run off to a meeting, but she introduced me to the other intern who showed me around! It was crazy though because here I have not met anyone from the west coast, but ironically the other intern was from the Wedgewood neighborhood in Seattle!! Such a small world! She was really nice and showed me how to set up events and then showed me pretty much everything all day!

I also had to have 2 different orientations - a computer orientation so I could use my computer and then an HR orientation to sign release forms! The rest of the day was pretty much doing basic intern tasks like making different op-ed articles for the events and data input! It was not a very exciting day but at least I wasn't thrown a bunch of tasks that I couldn't do, it all seemed pretty easy! But there was definitely a lot of information in my brain of passwords and how to get to certain hard drives and files on my computer and we have to manage 3 different email accounts so my brain was dead by the end of the day! Also I had no idea when they took their lunch break so I just sat at my desk by myself and didn't eat lunch because I didn't know if I could leave and I was too scared to ask! But I have a lunch planned with the other intern tomorrow so I will definitely eat tomorrow!

I'm hoping to get more interesting tasks later that are a little bit more international relations related, but I'm also the intern and I do feel like I'm doing what most interns do, at least I'm not having to make coffee or copies, I am doing legitimate work! And at least I can go to the events by the scholars if I have time during the work day and we get free food since every event is catered! We all have learned quickly the little ways to save money and how to get free food - the other interns from the Washington Internship Institute and I joke that by the end of the semester we will all start going to the soup kitchen for free food because we are basically at homeless status since we have no income! I don't think we actually will, but it would be funny and then we joke about how their would be an article about "Interns flocking to Soup Kitchens" in the Washington Post which would then force our organizations to pay us! :)

One other perk though about my internship is we have 24 hour access to the gym at the Carnegie Endowment, and we have a really fancy tea, coffee and hot cocoa machine!

Today was the first day of class and we had 5 hours of class total! We had 2 hours of our internship seminar from 9-11am and then 3 hours of our international relations seminar from 1-4pm! It was a really long day!! We also have SO much homework to do this summer! For our internship seminar we have to read 150 pages of books about our field per week! We can choose the books, but we have to buy them and read them so we keep learning more and more about our field! Awesome, another thing to buy...I feel like all we do here is spend money, it's getting a little bit stressful, especially since this is the first time I have to live on a budget!

And then for our international relations seminar we had to pay $60 for books, and have to read those books + articles + the newspaper every day + the economist!! Basically a ridiculous amount of reading! And then on top of that we have to write papers, do 4 informational interviews, and prepare a professional development plan! It's a lot, and it's all helpful but I don't know how we are going to have time to do it all!!!!! So all of us are a bit overwhelmed after having both the first day of interning and then the first day of class!!!! Hopefully it will get easier!