It’s CRAZY to think that I am starting my third week at this internship. It has been such an incredible experience thus far. This summer I am interning at a political fundraising firm, which is about two blocks away from Capitol Hill in the SW part of Washington DC. I’ve preformed a variety of tasks throughout my time here. For example during my first two weeks, I was up against a huge learning curve because I had to be taught how to do specific fundraising tasks. I was trained in researching donors, using NGP VAN, using opensecrets.com and fec.gov, creating matrix, filing checks, helping with events, etc. Now that I am past that period, I am very comfortable with completing the tasks that I am given. Yesterday was a big day because we were all assigned to specific associates, which are basically our main “boss”. Each associate is assigned to specific congressmen so interns are supposed to focus our fundraising efforts on their re-election campaigns. I’m so lucky to have the associate that I have been assigned to because she has become a great mentor to me throughout these last two weeks. She really encourages me and appreciates the hard work that I put in at the office.
My biggest tip when looking for an internship is to not straight up ask for a job/internship. Start off a positive dialogue with people who work in the field that you are interested in by setting up an informational interview. Since people love to talk about themselves, it will be really informative and hopefully if it goes well they will encourage you to speak with others or put you in contact with people with other job opportunities. That’s exactly how I was able to get my incredible internship. I was simply talking to my best friend’s aunt, who is a lobbyist, about her job when she encouraged me to speak with her boss who was a Tulane alum. From there, he put me in contact with other Tulane alumnus in the DC area, which eventually lead me to the partner of the firm I intern at.
My first week was nothing that I expected it to be. I expected the environment to be incredibly cold, impersonal, and intimidating but that was the complete opposite. I am lucky enough to say that I work in an incredibly fun and accepting environment. The office is very small and the associates are all fairly young, which makes everything very enjoyable. During the first week I gained so many different fundraising skills and even got to work at an event where I met so many different congressmen and had the incredible opportunity to meet Nancy Pelosi!!
It’s hard to say what my expectations are for this summer because everyday seems to be something new and exciting. This summer has already exceeded my expectations so everything from this point on will simply be phenomenal. For example, today I had the chance to go to a congressional crawfish boil, so who knows what the rest of the summer will bring!
Talk to y’all later!
Keep wishing me luck!