Hello, it’s me.
It’s hard to believe that my internship has been finished for over a week at this point! Those 11 weeks went by so quickly, it’s almost surreal but I cannot emphasize how incredible this summer was. I grew so much as a person and truly realized that going into politics is the correct career choice for me.
This summer one of my goals was to improve my professionalism skills. Although I have been a part of the business fraternity on campus and they have taught me many professional skills, I wanted to feel more at ease when working in a professional environment. Throughout my time at the firm my professionalism skills grew vastly. It’s difficult to explain how they improved but I think the greatest aid was working in a professional environment four days a week where I was expected to interact with members of Congress and work on projects independently. This sense of autonomy gave me the freedom to work on projects at my own speed, interact with dignitaries, and allowed me to take more responsibility.
Being as young as I am it’s quiet intimidating when adults asks me “what’s next.” I have no idea how this internship will affect the rest of my time at Tulane or the far future, but I have a general sense about how it affects the immediate future. Ideally I would love to get involved with one of the senatorial campaigns that will be occurring this fall in Louisiana. I would love be able to assist the candidates in their fundraising efforts, which will allow me to utilize the skills that I have gained throughout the summer. Besides that I am going to continue applying for more political internships to gain more transferrable skills that I will be able to use in my future career.
This internship has really showed me how little I knew about politics and emphasized how much that I have left to learn. It taught me some of the complexities of politics and inspired me to gain more knowledge about this field. After speaking with many of the associates at the firm, I decided that having experience with campaigns and working in the Washington DC office of congressmen may be very beneficial. Those two work experiences tended to be a common stepping-stone for most of the political fundraisers the firm.
My biggest advice for anyone interested in any kind of internship is to just apply!!!! I never in a million years would have expected to be able to intern Angerholzer Broz Consulting because I thought that I didn’t have the political experience to actually be hired but I was completely wrong. I would encourage ANYONE to apply for ANY position they are interested in because you never know what could happen. But specifically if anyone was applying to intern for ABC then I would encourage them to do as much research into current politics as possible, this way they would feel at ease when speaking with the director of operations.
This summer was my first glimpse at being a “real” adult and it definitely changed the way I viewed certain aspects of the world. One of the biggest realizations that I had was seeing how politics differs between men and women. I had the privilege of working on a woman’s campaign and it was intriguing to see how her fundraising efforts differed from another man’s fundraising efforts. It may be subtle but there are differences in how the two genders must go about approaching donors and whom each candidate should reach out to for support. I always knew that politics was a male dominated field but I never would have thought that even the fundraising aspect of it was quiet different. This realization has definite changed the way that I think about problem solving. I realize that each situation needs to be tailored a bit differently in order to be the most effective.
Well, I’m signing off now!
Have a great school year and if you have any questions about my experience feel free to reach out.