Here I am, back in "the Have," as some people call it. Which, actually, I think is pretty dumb. But I am nevertheless returned to school and Connecticut, and most important of all: I am in my new one-bedroom apartment, a space I share with no one and nothing except my Sinatra imagery and my tendency to hold conversations with myself!

This apartment was also the site of the party I had this week! I invited all the new first-years in American Studies and Film Studies to my hiz-ouse to hang out and perhaps also participate in an impromptu dance party. Attendance was high, food was eaten and drinks drank, and I got props for being a mad-awesome hostess! And there was a brief impromptu dance party. I call this a a success.

What did you say? You want to see pictures of the apartment? Okay!

Here's my building. You can't see my entance from here, but it's over on the right side of the building. In the middle is the fountain, which I am kind of getting used to the sound of (constantly running water). That would be the thing that runs me out of here, but we're giving it time.

Here's my front doorway! To the front is the living room, to the right you can see a bit of the study nook. The kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom is are to left, entrances obscured by the door.


Study nook! This photo taken from the kitchen.


Kitchen! Notice party supplies on the microwave cart next to the fridge.


Living room:

Bedroom:


Also, you may not remember, but: In the spring, I arranged to buy a bunch of furniture off of the previous lessor, who was moving in with his girlfriend and was selling most of his stuff. So, with the exception of the bedroom dresser (Ikea) and the study nook chair (Staples), all the furniture was in the apartment when I moved in! And cost me a grand total of $400. RIDICULOUS.

Turns out, though, even though you have a sofa, you need a lot more stuff in order to successfully live. Like a dishdrainer. And dishes to drain. And a shower curtain. And soap. So I have spent most of my "vacation" shopping, cleaning, organizing, and arranging. There has been a lot less time for The Sims 3 than I had anticipated! Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I am super-happy to have an apartmenent to shop for, clean, organize, and arrange. The Sims 3 will always be waiting for me...

This morning, Karuna and I went to the Newseum, which we got into for half-price (thanks, WTOP radio!), and which was disappointing for me. One of my new activities is to be highly critical of museum exhibitions. Actually, that's not a new activity. But I've been doing it a lot this summer. I was pretty pissy about it the Newseum, in hindsight. (Sorry, KJ.) But I also only slept for 2-3 hours last night, so some of it was that. And some of it was that someone with a PhD put the phrase "Lincoln freed the slaves" on an exhibit wall without following it with "in the territories over which he had no jurisdiction, and not in the territories over which he did have jurisdiction." Listen, this isn't even a revisionist history argument, it's in the actual document. I'm not saying Lincoln was a bad man -- keep him on the penny, just tell the truth about the Emancipation Proclamation.

In other parts of the Newseum: The J. Edgar Hoover & the News exhibit didn't suck. So that was nice.

After lunch at Heller's bakery, Karuna came over to the apartment and we talked about nothing important for a few hours while I packed. I thought I was about finished when Karuna left a few minutes ago -- but I just realized that I had a full load of clothes in the washing machine and scant room in my bags. Ruh-roh. Um, I think I'm gonna have to take a long nap before I can deal with it. My lack of sleep is blunting my problem-solving skills.

And though it did not happen in DC but did happen this summer: Liz's wedding was the best!
Love that won't die:
a. SRI!
b. Liz and Mike's!

My last day at my internship is Friday, and then I head back to New Haven on Sunday morning. As I close out my summer in DC, I have a few reflections:
1. I still like this city a lot. Walking around at night, turning a corner, and seeing the Capitol dome in the distance -- Mr. Smith moments never seem to go away.
2. My internship was not as bad as it may have appeared on this blog. Some days were quite frustrating because the project was all a mess -- though it eventually cleared a bit. My supervisor was/is a terrible supervisor and an obnoxious person, and that was difficult. But I have some good experiences, I must admit:
a. The other interns have been fabulous, to a man/woman. Actually, except for that one who didn't do any work and yet managed to write a page-long "progress report" for the weekly meetings. Whatever. Everyone else was fabulous, and I liked being the "project coordinator." Leading from within, that's all me.
b. I was given the assignment to conduct the videotaped interviews we've been scheduling with pastors (and other worship leaders), and though I didn't really want to do it, that was mostly because I get scared of people. So being forced to do those interviews will help me later on, because I actually love oral history projects (StoryCorps forever!), and I want to incorporate oral history into my dissertation somehow. So it was actually very beneficial for me to be thrown in the deep end on this interview thing.
c. I got a glimpse inside the Smithsonian, including one very helpful workshop on applying for jobs within the Smithsonian. It was all-day long, which was a little unnecessary, but there were door prizes, so I'm not going to complain about it. And having made a pretty good impression with my work ethic and organizational skills, I think I'm in a pretty good position to ask for recommendations if I ever want to return to the Smithsonian in some capacity. (I am hoping that the relevant staff will forget/overlook the days I got a little testy when dealing with AG...)
3. It was good to reconnect with friends here, to be in town for festivities like KJ's bachelorette shindig, and to feel like no time had passed at all, even though I'd been gone for a year.

I whine a lot, but it's been a good summer. It's time to peace out, but I'm looking forward to a good fall.

I got gently reprimanded earlier this week for being outspoken at a staff meeting. Five interns will be leaving over the next two weeks, and I wrote up a document listing what each of the interns have been responsible for, so we could talk about how the rest of the interns will (or will not) cover their work. Anthony glanced at the list and declared that there would be no problem. I tried to express that if we don't make some intentional decisions here, there most definitely will be a problem, because 5 interns can't do 10 interns' worth of work. I explained that there were some points at which I was responsible for several of the tasks that he thought that one person could handle, and I was overwhelmed, and my quality of work suffered.

After the meeting, Anthony told me that I needed to calm down, that everything would be fine, and that my manner was possibly overwhelming the new intern.
Anthony (cockily): Trust me that I know what I'm doing here, okay?
Claudia (unspoken-ly): Anthony, I've been here for 10 weeks. If you wanted me to trust that you knew what you were doing in relation to this project, you would have earned that trust by now.

Evidentiary support for my position, or things that have indicated that you don't know what you're doing:
1. You don't know what we (the interns) are doing.
2. You are never here. (Thank God.)
3. Though you are never here, and though you declared me the project coordinator (and then disappeared), you have not, in the past several weeks, asked me to tell you about how the project is proceeding.
4. You hold back vital information and reveal it as some kind of awesome surprise that you in your brilliance have conceived of. You do this about once a week. This week, for example: No one, including me and the deputy director, knew that a new intern would be coming on to our project this week. I discovered this on Tuesday morning when an intern introduced himself, said he was working on the houses of worship project, and asked me, "Do you know where Anthony is? Do you know when he'll get here?" I had, let me remind you, spent the previous afternoon trying to make a plan for how to reorganize the project. Knowing that a new intern was coming is essential information for such a task. Note, too, that I was making the plan for reorganization. Not you, the supervisor, but me, the intern. This indicates one of two things:
a. You don't do your job, so an intern has to do it for you.
b. You're bad at your job, as indicated by the fact that none of the interns were aware that you had a plan for transitioning the work, so that an intern felt the need to take the initiative to make such a plan.

Evidentiary support for your position:
1. You know how to hire people to make up for your weaknesses. But since you don't see those weaknesses, you can't be intentionally hiring competent people to compensate for them, so this is probably just luck.
2. You know how to depend on your luck.