Internships

Like other members of the Class of 2017, I rejoiced at the end of finals last May. All my hard work over the previous four months had paid off and I was quite proud of my performance. Little did I know, the grueling late-night hours in Olin were just beginning. After a brief respite at home, I returned to Wesleyan for Summer Session in June. I took 2.5 credits—Foreign Policy at the Movies (GOVT 387), Principles of Biology (BIO 181), and Principles of Biology Lab (BIO 191). Adding to the difficult nature of these accelerated courses was the experience of cooking for myself. (I’ll leave the story of how I almost started a fire in Alpha Delt’s kitchen for another blog post.) Altogether, the experience was extremely rewarding—I now have the opportunity to graduate a semester early or spend more time on my thesis senior year.

In July, I shipped off to Washington, D.C. to intern with Congressman Sander Levin (MI-09). In addition to responding to constituent letters and leading tours around the Capitol, I wrote memos for Rep. Levin and his staff on briefings, hearings, and important pieces of legislation. The office was continually a flurry of activity with lobbyists, legislative assistants, and high-ranking members of Congress always stopping by for a visit. While my life’s work likely won’t focus on politics, having a firsthand experience of how our nation runs will benefit me in whatever field I choose to pursue.

I finished my summer by serving as an Orientation Leader for incoming first year students, including 43 new members of the Class of 2017! Although I wore the same red shirt for about a week straight, knowing that I helped lay the foundation for so many students’ success at Wesleyan made every moment worthwhile.

I had an eye-opening experience this summer as a Forensic Policy Intern at the Innocence Project in New York City. In its most basic structure, the organization has two branches: legal and policy. The legal side works to exonerate innocent prisoners, whereas the policy side works to prevent wrongful convictions from happening in the first place. My most significant project involved reassembling information on how and why to file an allegation for the investigation of a lab. The information existed, but it was a lot of bulk text that was difficult to read and follow. I picked out the most important information and used some graphics and flow charts to make the information more readable and understandable.

The workplace environment was incredible—my supervisors and colleagues were young, welcoming, and ultimately became good friends. There were weekly brown bag lunch lectures by individuals from outside organizations, exposing me to all kinds of areas of law and public service that I hadn’t known much about before, such as public defense, the rights of pregnant women, and the work of the ACLU and the Ford Foundation. Overall, I learned more about the type of career that I want to work toward and was exposed to both problems and solutions in our society.

During my time at the United Nations I was given immense freedom to be able to attend meetings at the United Nations on various issues ranging from fracking to the education of children to global gender equality. I was astounded by the amount of human beings in one room all striving to better our international society on a daily basis. I have always been passionate about social equality, so having the opportunity to work on projects directly related to this pervasive issue was very satisfying. On the other hand, I found it hard to work at a desk job, which seemed paradoxical to me when working to fight for social justice worldwide.  However, this opportunity strengthened my confidence in my belief that I want my career to be in gender equality-related work, although I’m still not sure what capacity is best suited to me. Overall, I was lucky to be able to delve into a world of like-minded people with thought-provoking ideas as I sought creative solutions to gargantun problems such as sexual and gender-based violence.