Since I've Been Gone

To sum up the two weeks before the start of my internship I basically sat at home and did almost nothing. My dad no longer had the movie channels so I had to find some other form of entertainment to pass the time in Lawton. DVD did the trick.

I flew out thursday before the start of my internship which was Monday. In that time span I hung out with my sister and attempted to get a lay of the land before having to go head first into it essentially on my own. At least I have my sister and Nanette there in the area to hang out with (read about Nanette accompanying me in Georgetown below). 

Here are some pics of my living situation and surroundings:

My side of the apartment. It ended up being a one bedroom-for-two-people-type arrangement so I have a roommate. He's from Michigan and interns at the Department of Education. Turns out he's a nice guy, which is good. I was worried my roommate would be a douche. Not the case here.

My McPhearson Square metro stop entrance. DC is pretty famous for having incredibly long escalators.

My place of internment, a pretty inconspicuous building for being one of the best in the biz.

My apartment building in the middle of the George Washington University campus. 

I'll try to sum up what has happened to me in the last two days.

Monday

Nervous as shit, of course. I manage to accumulate two strikes just seconds after entering the doors. They might not be a big deal in reality, but at the time I was metaphorically hitting myself in the face.

First, after signing and filling out all the paperwork that was sent to me in the spring, making sure to fill all of the appropriate fields and have all the papers in order along with copies of identification material neatly tucked away in a folder, I manage to completely forget to bring the folder with me. If you could illustrate what I was saying in my head it would be a big bold bleeding red floating F-U-C-K-. in front of my eyes.

Second, as the other interns filed in I noticed they all had nice business slacks and light colored button down shirts tucked in neatly behind plain black belts and business shoes. What did I have on? Well, let's just say I took the note "casual to business casual" more on the casual side.

Double fuck.

It ended up not being a big deal at all. The supervisor just needed my paperwork by the end of the week and we were all sitting at a table most of the day. Whew. Needless to say I won't let that happen again. So eager to prevent another wardrobe mishap, I went straight for the shops in Georgetown to update my business attire. I'll get to that later.

Midway in the day was time to see the newsroom floors. Needless to say, it was pretty incredible getting a look at the newsrooms. You could just feel that it was a place of great prestige and history. You could almost close your eyes and take yourself back to stories and times that you might have only read about in, well, the paper. Passing by Bob Woodward's office and seeing Leonard Bernstein's mailbox kind of sums it up.

All of the rest of day was really all of us interns learning how to use their proprietary computer programs and networks, which was a real eye-opener into the level of communication possible (and not possible) by a major newspaper today.

After the end of work, good old Nanette Light called me and we went to Georgetown. She was my shopping chaperone while I attempted to update my look. We caught up with events in our lives and internship stories. I told her about my two strikes, she told me about her three other roommates. That must suck. I ended up going to Banana Republic, Express and of all places Aldo (for some shoes). I got things that were really foreign to me - grown up clothes. Shit, that is really lame. Now I have to look like I do something important instead of looking like a poor college student. Three dress pants, two dress shirts, a belt and dress shoes later I think I might be more ready to at least look the part of a respectable adult. 

Yuck.

Tuesday

Our entire day was devoted to a tour of the metro area. This meant downtown DC as well as all surrounding counties within what is known as "inside the beltway." This basically meant an all-day bus ride across a bunch of regions of Virginia and Maryland. Needless to say it was a bit uncomfortable.

I woke up to the cracking of thunder and a torrential downpour. Not ideal for an all-day bus ride. The skies, however, managed to clear up and it was pretty much clear blue skies for the rest of the day. I ended up sitting next to the photo intern for the trip, a guy in the middle of getting his masters, 25 and married. I've come to find that most of the interns I am with are slightly older than me and are either in the process of getting  masters degree or have already completed their studies for one. I feel a bit out of place sometimes, but that goes for this whole experience.

The bus took us around GW, Georgetown and west into Arlington. From there we kept going west, all while hearing about the area's demographics, urban sprawl, economics, crime, immigration and migration patterns. This wasn't an old people's tour of DC. We went on the beltway and learned about the history behind how the area developed into what it is today. There are whole cities dedicated to supporting the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars spend on defense contractors. Most of the businesses were out there for the soul purpose of doing the government's work as commercial or civilian entities. The city known as Tysons actually holds more office space than Detroit and Miami combined. And have you ever heard of Tysons? Probably not, and they like to keep it that way.

Anyway, I sat next to the window for the whole trip and that ended up being a bad decision. Turns out the sun was on my side and I practically cooked for the afternoon. The trip itself wasn't all that bad, but it dragged on well into the afternoon. By the time it was 5 we were heading back into the city from the north and heard more about demographics and immigration patterns in the area. Turns out there is a heavy population of Koreans and el Salvadeens (sp) in the area, and learning about their history in the metro was pretty interesting.

As we were making our way back to the office the clouds started rolling in again. We got reports that hail and heavy rain would hit just as we were finishing up. Good, because I don't have an umbrella. It ended up doing just that, and I halfway jogged to the metro stop just four blocks down. Thankfully there was a guy there selling cheap-o umbrellas for $5 and I promptly bought one. Turned out to save my ass because by the time I got out of the metro on my stop the rain was really coming down. Overall, not too bad of a time. I think I'm starting to warm up to my fellow interns.

Tomorrow is going to be a big day. I'll let you know more later.