The week of August 5th, the last week of my internship, was a busy week for me. There were mandatory exit meetings and discussions that I had to attend and people whom I was planning to meet. I met with a Pomona alum I had first met through the Shadow-a-Sagehen program in December. I remembered she worked at the Department of State, and thought she would be a great person to contact for an internship next summer. Although she didn’t offer me an internship after meeting for coffee for half an hour, she told me to apply online. The White House interns I was working with planned a dinner at TGI Fridays that week as a final farewell, but that didn’t go as planned since there were too many of us and not enough tables and chairs that could be joined together. Although I wasn’t eating since I was still fasting for Ramadan, it was nice to see everyone come together.
I was surprised when I got to work on Wednesday; we were all going to meet Bo Obama, the First Dog of the United States. He was much bigger and fluffier than I thought he would be, and the first celebrity pet that I ever met! Meeting him in the EEOB was definitely a nice touch to the internship. Thursday was a good day for me. It was Eid, the day when Muslims break their fast because the month of Ramadan is over. I woke up, ate some dates, and headed to GW where there was an Eid prayer happening. First order of business for the day: Eat a doughnut after craving one for the past month. Since it was a holiday for me, I treated myself to new shoes at Nordstrom. I went all out since I thought I deserved them after working hard over the summer. Later that day, I met up with the Claremont in DC group, who were mostly CMCers, and had dinner together on Capital Hill and then walked around the Capital with some of them.
Friday was the day I realized how privileged I was to be working at the White House and how honored I should feel for this opportunity. It was a pretty busy day for interns at the office since we had to go through an exit process and submit paperwork to offices in the EEOB and the New Executive Office Building. Doing that alone made me realize how great this experience has been because who knows when I’ll ever be able to access the EEOB and stand or eat lunch 20 feet from the West Wing again. To top that, the staff threw us a graduation party honoring us and all of our hard work we’ve been doing in the office over the past 11 weeks. It was at that moment that I realized how important the work I’ve been doing has and how it has impacted the office overall, even though I’m only one person. After work, we all collected our personal things from the office since we wouldn’t be able to gain access to it again, took some last pictures at the EEOB to add to our memories, and headed over to happy hour with the staff, which was pretty interesting. Once we all said our last farewells to each others, I headed home and then went to a CMCer’s house party in DC to end my summer experience in DC on a high note.
Looking back at my experience in DC overall, I’ve accomplished everything that I planned on doing. I made connections, made friends with fellow interns, took advantage of the District’s free museums and explored them, toured Georgetown countless times, checked out Adams Morgan, visited the zoo, went to the US Botanical Garden, and made the best of my time there. I still have some touristy things to do like go to a Nationals baseball game, get a library card at the Library of Congress, and tour the National Cathedral, but there’s always next time.