And so it ends...

     Hello! It appears I have reached the end of my nine week venture in Washington DC and a close has come to my internship with the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education at the Department of Education. I cannot say enough how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to spend my summer in this great city and I extend my deepest gratitude to the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights for having funded my stay.

        

     Before I discuss my final week in the office with the initiative, I must of course tell you about the public policy conference I attended over the weekend. The Heinz College of Carnegie Mellon invited me to a leadership conference this past weekend to discuss a future in public policy and international affairs. I met brilliant likeminded students from around the country for the event and I am extremely glad I attended. The conference allowed me to share ideas and develop new ones of my own regarding my next steps after graduation from CMC. I also attended some fascinating workshops on the power of negotiation and the necessity for respect in the workplace. I met some extremely accomplished public servants with varied diverse backgrounds who inspired me to keep searching for my specific passion in government. Public service is a thankless job and the more time I spend around dedicated servants such as those I met this past weekend, the more motivated I become to uphold their legacy and maintain their exemplary work ethic.

     

     I also attended two think tank talks this past week. One was held at the US Institute of Peace and was focused on art’s potential to become a tool for peace in the Middle East. The other was at the Hudson Institute and discussed the challenges impeding economic and political development in South Africa. Both talks were really fascinating, but the first was definitely my favorite. It was refreshing and inspiring to hear from “art lords” working in Afghanistan, Jordan, and Iraq, to listen to them discuss their efforts to bring communities together to color the streets with beautiful murals and art. Their courage spoke volumes to me. I find it invaluable to listen to individuals who refuse to accept what is, who have the audacity to dream of what could be. If it weren’t for these brave minds with their tenacious refusal to accept the chaos and destruction of war, we would be a lost species undoubtedly. But enough of my romantic rambling of human rights activists! I will discuss my final week of work now.

    

    I completed the majority of my projects before the beginning of my last week, a major relief from my perspective. That being said, there was one massive project concerning a database (with sensitive information) that had yet to be finished. With the help of a few other interns, though, we were able to complete our work and left the department feeling a great sense of accomplishment. Reflecting on my time with my team, I was definitely presented with a great deal of leadership opportunities, all of which I snatched quite aggressively. Humor aside, I believe my work environment presented me with a perfect balance of structure and flexibility. There was enough guidance, but enough leeway for me to get things done with my own flair of creativity stamped on a majority of my projects.

    

     Additionally, I really want to acknowledge how great my supervisors were. Bill Mendoza (the initiative’s director) and Mia Long (senior policy advisor) embodied everything I look for in superiors. They were passionate, humble, lighthearted bosses who never lost sight of the big picture. I will forever be appreciative of their patience with us interns during the first few weeks as well. What I admired most strongly, though, was their sense of responsibility to those they serve and their unbending principles that always moved them forward from defeats. Their job is thankless yet no matter how difficult their days were, they kept moving forward. No matter how many projects were returned to their desks from the White House, no matter how many tribal leaders angrily confronted them about their lack  of work (as if), they never gave up. I can only hope to be as driven in my own career one day.

     

     

Winning team 9 from Heinz College Conference 

Allie and Bri at the White House Initiative!  

My view from the Washington Monument after my evening runs

This summer in DC has without a doubt been the most productive and fun use of my time in between school years. I’m looking forward to my return to Southern California for some much needed family bonding before I head to Belgrade for my fall semester. Once again, I want to thank the Mgrublian Center for funding my internship. My summer wouldn’t have been possible without them!

       

July 23rd 2016

     As I approach the final two weeks of my summer in D.C., I can’t help but reflect a little more frequently. On the one hand, this city has been more fun and rewarding than I’m able to express. On the other hand, the hot and sticky humidity has me desperately missing the dry (and much more comfortable) heat of southern California. Minor complaints about the weather aside, I definitely think I could see myself living and working in this city after graduation. The exposure to the world of public policy and government makes me only want to stay and dive myself in further. I still feel like that kid in the candy store, totally overwhelmed and excited at all the options that lie ahead of me.

     

     My projects at work always keep me busy. They also offer me plenty of opportunities to assume leadership, something I’m very comfortable with and more than happy to grab at while I’m here. The content of my projects has actually become a bit sensitive, so I unfortunately can’t share too many details about them at this point. I will say, however, that I’ve become very familiar with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that replaced the No Child Left Behind Act recently. The ways in which each of the titles of the bill applies to native students is of particular interest to my office. I get to connect with public schools around the country on a daily basis right now, and it’s extremely fascinating to hear their diverse perspectives. Some afternoons, I find myself on phone calls with superintendents from schools in South Dakota, for example, from a town of 700 people. Their stories bring my work to life, and that’s something I really appreciate.

    

    I’ve found the Department of Education to be a really welcoming and exciting environment these last seven weeks. I’ve met some truly brilliant and passionate public servants who, whether or not they know it, have totally restored my faith in a fundamental component of our democracy. As I look forward to my last two weeks of the internship, I’m also excited for a few additional activities in D.C. that I’ve signed myself up for. I’m attending the Heinz College's 2016 Public Service Weekend this upcoming Friday through Sunday. I was recently sent my itinerary and I’m pretty excited for our activities and keynote speakers. The focus is public policy and international affairs so I think it’s fair to assume I’ll have a great time. Additionally, I’ve signed up for two think tank talks next week. On Thursday I will be attending a talk about the use of art to cultivate peace in Afghanistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Also, on Friday (before I attend the conference) I will attend a Hudson talk on the future of democracy in South Africa. One of my best friends is actually in Cape Town for the summer and he shares vivid stories of the rather rampant inequality that flourishes there. His stories peaked my interest in attending the second talk.

     I will have plenty to share after the conference finishes and I’m excited to share! This will certainly be an eventful week for me. 

July 13, 2016

     Hello! It’s been a while since my last blog, meaning I have many updates to share. The last time
I wrote, I expressed enthusiasm regarding my full plate of projects that kept me busy and focused. This continues to be my case, something I can’t express enough gratitude for. There became a point, actually, in which I realized I was involved in too many of my office’s projects. During the beginning and end of every week, our team meets together as a whole and discusses our progress on all of our projects. It was at one of these meetings I expressed that I felt overloaded and would like to step back from one project. Later on, my bosses commended me for communicating this, as they understand it takes courage to speak up in that situation. I reasoned it only made sense to let them know, as I would hate to spread myself thin and deliver less than my best effort in my final projects.

     Additionally, my supervisors commended me for my leadership in one of the major projects involving all of the policy assistants. They noticed how I naturally filled the gap of leadership the
project required and were very impressed with how I have been guiding the work. As if last week
couldn’t get better, my boss pulled me and a fellow intern into the office on Friday for a moment to invite us to a dinner at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building this upcoming Thursday. We will be attending a farewell dinner with our director and we are more excited than I am able to articulate. The event is supposed to last three to four hours, giving us a chance to mingle, network, and explore the executive building.

     While work has kept my team busy, there have definitely been days where it was hard to
concentrate on getting things done due to political upheavals and/or national tragedies. Working in Washington D.C. means current events are inescapable, forcing you to confront a menu of issues not only with your colleagues, but with yourself. All of the gun related violence hit our office hard. What I’ve been truly grateful for and impressed with is the immediate response and action of the department as a whole to offer itself as a resource to all its employees during this time. We have had so many meetings as a department in which safe spaces were offered to everyone to vent and discuss all of these tragedies. It has definitely warmed my heart to see the strong sense of community that is rooted at the Department of Education.

    I know I write about this in every blog post, but it’s important to me that I take advantage of all the resources D.C. can offer me while I'm here. I have signed up for several events at think tanks in the city and turned in an application for a D.C. public policy conference last week. I’m hoping these events will allow me to network, as well as expose me to new fields of interests. I definitely still feel like a kid in a candy store, overwhelmed at all the great options that lie ahead of me. I would really like to dig deeper into one of these interests before I leave the city. I often walk to the Lincoln Memorial to have my sentimental and (slightly) unnecessary patriotic moment on those crowded steps. It’s a peaceful way to end my hectic days, and it’s a view I don’t ever see myself getting tired of.

The Projects Roll In

     I just completed the third week of my internship and it’s safe to say I’ve made myself right at home in D.C. My work and home environments are both meeting my expectations for new challenges and adventures, to say the least. I’m living in a George Washington University dorm just a block away from buildings like the IMF and World Bank and as I mentioned in my last post, a mere 7 minute jog from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It’s not hard to get up out of bed and catch the metro when you feel so close and connected to the institutions you’ve only been able to read about and discuss in a classroom.

     Additionally, the projects my team was assigned have finally been laid out and I’m pleasantly surprised by the work ahead of us. As an intern for a White House initiative focused on increasing educational opportunities for indigenous students, our focus lies in protecting these native students’ civil rights. Created by previous policy assistants, we were handed down a massive database in which civil rights concerns have been documented. It is our task to update, revise, and most-likely redesign the database which requires a fundamental understanding of the programming they used, statistical research, and of course, data input. While the last task can definitely be draining, I would argue there is potential for it to be exciting for our project because we get to geocode. Our initiative hopes to one day publish the data we’ve collected through a visual representation on several maps of the United States. This requires geocoding which will definitely present a new, possibly challenging, terrain for me. My executive supervisor has put me in charge of this project and while that poses some pressure, I’m excited to step beyond my comfort zone and develop new skills along the way.

     In addition to this, I’m working on a project that is going to highlight a misinterpretation of census data collected from the Common Core. I was unaware that while identifying with specific ethnicities and races on a test form, if a student who identified as an American Indian marked it as so, but also marked that they associated with a Hispanic ethnicity, they were automatically discounted as American Indian students. One could only imagine that there would be a significantly lower American Indian student population recorded than in reality, actually exists. This statistic could become important for schools applying for grants specifically aiming to serve as resources for indigenous students. Thus the aim of our project is to present that gap between the recorded indigenous student population and theactual indigenous population. I am also the lead intern on this project as well.

     All in all, I am feeling surprisingly productive and useful at my internship. I was pretty fearful that I would fall into the stereotypical role of a government intern, that being useless. Thus far I have felt very purposeful and I’m finding the work actually engaging. My supervisors are really charismatic hard workers and they’re very fun to be around. We’ve also been added to an intern email group in which we get invited to lunches with employees from other departments and “field trips” to places like the Supreme Court and (hopefully) the White House.

So essentially, work is great, the city is great, my D.C. friends are great, and I am great. I’m done with week 3 and still doing great!

June 15, 2016

Hello! Welcome to my blog for my 2016 summer in Washington D.C. I will be using this space to document my nine weeks in the city as I intern for the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education (WHIAIANE) at the Department of Education. As it’s my first time in D.C., I will also use the space to document the city because it is absolutely gorgeous here and there is always somewhere new and exciting to explore!

    

     I flew in last Sunday on June 5th and took a few days to myself to move in to my housing with a fellow CMCer, Latisha Shah. Devoting Monday and Tuesday to Target runs and tourist sites, I wandered around the city, finding that the IMF, World Bank, and several executive departments were literally blocks away from me. I had my cheesy patriotic moment at the Washington Memorial Monday evening as well, more than thrilled to find that it was walking distance from my dorm at George Washington University. I’ve found the Mall to offer a perfect running path, actually. After all, who wouldn’t enjoy running alongside the reflecting pool and up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial? Tourist sites aside, the city itself is beautiful and Latisha and I have found a handful of great eateries and bakeries to explore. A mutual CMC friend joined us for dinner one night who just completed the DC program offered through CMC. She encouraged us to join a website called https://dc.linktank.com/ in which events like movie screenings and talks at think tanks are posted, usually free, for us to attend. We’re really excited to take advantage of that resource while we are here.

    

     I began work at the DOE on Wednesday, June 8th where I met my supervisor, Ron Lessard, and five fellow interns. Everyone has been very welcoming and patient with the interns and we’ve all been very appreciative of that. Working at the DOE, or any federal agency for that matter, requires an intensive background check. All of us interns are currently going through that process and taking orientation classes online right now. Our projects kick off at the beginning of the next week as the spring interns leave and the summer interns (that being my team) move in. We’ve already been introduced to the projects available to us, and so many of them sound really interesting. I believe I will be working on 1) a native language revitalization project alongside my supervisor, 2) research for economic development on a specific reservation, and 3) research for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that pertains to American Indian and Alaska native students. I picked these projects because they all focus on something different and allow me to integrate my wide interests. The second and third projects will both allow me to work with other offices in the DOE, too, which I find particularly exciting. We’ve yet to begin these projects as our executive director comes in to the office tomorrow from travels in South Dakota. That being said, I’m finding my fellow interns, Ron, and policy advisor Mia, to all be very welcoming and friendly.

   

     I am admittedly a little nervous, but mostly excited about the experience to come. It will certainly be an adventure and offer me some great exposure to the bustling DC scene, and for that, I am very enthusiastic. Here’s to an adventurous and productive summer!