Senator Kennedy’s Office

Tarsi Dunlop, 2009

I feel as though I performed in a self-motivated manner during this internship.  I put in the 100 hours, and I was able to explore a topic of interest, while creating my own knowledge base and ultimately research question that encapsulated what I learned.  I was able to establish good relationships with the Senate Library staff – and they are absolutely wonderful and incredibly helpful.  I made an effort to chat with one of my supervisors, Steve Gregory, at least a few times a week throughout the days.  We had conversations about foreign policy and my topic on a general basis, and he seemed frequently impressed with my points and observations.  I was able to combine some of my academic background in US government and foreign policy to the topic I was researching, and it gave me a greater understanding of the nuances and difficulties of balancing power within our government.

My learning about the career industry is more difficult to pin-point, however when I look back on the month as a whole, a few observations stand out.  The first is that the independent nature of the project made the process of researching enjoyable.  I know that a great number of Senate staffers spend hours in the library doing research on previous bills, statements, remarks, and many other topics.  I feel as though if I ever ended up working as a Senate aide, I may actually enjoy doing some of the research.  It is far more methodical than I ever realized.  This type of experience is removed from “academic” or school research.  The independence I had, combined with less school insanity to juggle made the entire process a logical and satisfying experience.  It was a chance to explore questions that came up as I was researching one topic, and go off on tangents to draw larger observations or conclusions whenever new questions arose.

The second observation is that although I love being in DC, and even on the Hill, I also feel as though being in the middle of all of those political battles almost makes the policy too “political.” This is ironic perhaps that I am a political science major and I occasionally feel this way, but I am not entirely sure I would fit in there for a full time job.  Perhaps if I begin building an expertise in a certain area of policy – something I am interested in doing – and then end up on the Hill working for a specific committee, it would be a little less frustrating. There is a certain amount of energy and hype that goes on in the nation’s capital that I really enjoy. People there seem passionate about what they do.  It is an atmosphere that I thrive in, and also detest.  I do feel like somewhere there, I might find my niche, but I am not quite there yet.

The third, and perhaps most important, realization is one of a more personal nature.  I realized that in any job that I do, one of the most crucial things for me is going to be a place where I can learn and enjoy what I do. I realize that sounds incredibly cliché, and I am going to try and counter-act that a bit.  My experience at Middlebury College over four years has been wonderful.  I picked the right school without a doubt.  After my year abroad in London, I realized that there is a certain part of me that thrives on independent learning. This is probably because I was home-schooled until I was thirteen.  I never associated learning with school, or any of the downsides that come with it.  London was the first experience I’d had, since I was thirteen, where even a portion of day could be spent not obsessing about school. It left me free to absorb the world around me, and I felt like a sponge that was never overly saturated. Middlebury is not like that for me, I constantly feel stressed and overwhelmed, learning is actually becoming for me here.  My internship experience this J-term allowed me to enjoy the process of researching and learning, while leaving me rested and engaged enough to embrace my own critical thinking and ask questions as I went along.  I would go so far as to say, it was seeing my own education in action, or at least what people champion as one of the benefits of a liberal arts education.  I enjoyed this experience immensely and it reminded me that learning is something that I love to do.  It does not have to be overwhelming, or subjected to a letter grade, and having the skills from a liberal arts education makes connecting the dots and asking questions easier.  It is a great mindset to maintain in my final semester in college.

The entire experience gave me a chance to engage with the current events in Congress, while applying my academic background.  I think I often come out of classes feeling smarter, but occasionally wondering how my knowledge will apply to a job. As a senior, this is occasionally frightening.  I get a boost of self-esteem when I realize that I have skills I can apply, and given time to settle in somewhere, those tools from Middlebury will make themselves known in many ways.  The experience was not exactly what I thought it would be going in, but the choice to look at foreign policy changed the nature of my internship a bit. On the other hand, I gained something unexpected out of it that I am positive would never have happened in a classroom at Middlebury.  It was a bit more of a real life experience, a chance to apply my skills to something I wanted to know more about, and have some independence in my own method of exploration.  I won’t have all the answers in the workplace, but I think I can believe that finding them is something I might be capable of, and I do not have to feel so intimidated.

Please contact the Career Services Office for more information on this internship!