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.

Classic example of how my supervisor (does not) communicate. Two weeks ago, I got an email from him with a man's name in the subject line, and in the text it read:
"Locate this man for an interview about his activism. Thanks."

Let me be clear: This guy, a local activist, has nothing to do with our major occupation of the summer, documenting churches in the area. This is just something A. asked me to do, which is fine. So I did whatever Googling, and I have a work address and telephone number for him, and I sent A. an email with the information.

Since then, silence on this. Until yesterday, when A. asked me, "How's it going with the interview?"

At my internship, I have a semi-supervisory position that I call "head intern." It gives me absolutely no authority but does require that I do things like make sure that people know about the upcoming ice cream social and ask them to do the mandatory computer training. In short, I do not run this project. But if our for-real supervisor is out of the office, people ask me questions like I should have the answer, because I'm the one they keep getting emails from.

So what I've concluded today is that there is a thin line between "delegating" responsibilty and "abdicating" responsibility, and my supervisor hops back and forth over that line with regularity. Here is how I see the difference: If you tell the head intern what her responsibilities are, and then you leave the office for two weeks, then you are delegating. But if you are out of the office for two weeks and expect her to provide leadership in your absence without ever having a conversation about that, then you are abdicating.

Interns continue to trickle in to work on our project at the museum. This week, Peter arrived. Turns out that he's subletting a place a couple of blocks away from me in Columbia Heights, so we share a commute. Also, Peter is white. This will become relevant when I recount a piece of our conversation from our journey home:

Peter: So, what are you up to tonight?
Claudia: Twisting my hair.
Peter: Is that a metaphor?

What an adorable-pants.

INTERNET UPDATE: I have it at work now! I have it at home now! More frequent updates from Anacostia and Columbia Heights to come!

The internet situation in my sublet is... annoying. That's why I haven't updated, and why you may not hear from me much this summer. We'll have to see how this thing goes. But I did write something offline on Thursday (4), and here it is:

My internship is a HOT MESS.

My supervisor, god bless him, is a very nice man. Awkward as hell, but has a genuine heart, really. This is what I try to remember when I ask him about the hours I need to come in to work, and he tells me that getting the work done it more important than clocking hours. In a conversation that took thirty minutes and included a monologue about critical race theory. I am not kidding. First day of work, I sat with him in a cubicle and received an hour's worth of information over the course of FOUR HOURS.

Unsurprisingly, he CANNOT run a meeting. CANNOT. He ran an "orientation" for the five interns on Tuesday afternoon, scheduled until 3:30. We were there until 5. And then yesterday, we interns had to meet seprately because NOBODY UNDERSTOOD WHAT THE PROJECT IS. So we now have some kind of common understanding, but we have to meet again today with A. (supervisor) with a list of clarifying questions. Now, I'm an intern, and A. is my supervisor; but he's not that much older than I am, and I don't feel like I need to defer to him in the same way that I would feel compelled to defer to someone much older. Like how you have to listen to your grandma ramble. Maybe that's ageist, but whatever. So I'm really trying to make an effort to be respectful, but I cannot sit in another four-hour meeting in order to get the answer to five questions. Not if I have to dig through the poop of critical race theory to get to the seeds of practical answers.

That metaphor was probably unexpectedly gross. Sorry, it just came out.

And, um, pun unintended.

So that's a big problem, barely understanding my work because I can't get clear answers. The other big problem is that my desk isn't set up. I can't really talk about that right now. But let me say that if you give me the task of calling 80 churches, and I can't leave a voicemail message because I can't set up my voicemail for them to call back because I can't get online to get the instructions because the computer at my assigned desk doesn't have a hard drive and my assigned desk is behind a locked door that I haven't been given access to and so have to have a five-minute conversation with security if I want to even walk into that room, then I will not be able to efficiently complete that task.

But as I say, I can't really talk about that.

And finally, to flag a potential problem: over-eager intern. We'll call her Chaka. Listen, I'm trying to do a good job, but I'm not trying to do the best job ever. On a scale of 1-10, I'd be happy at a 7, maybe 7.5. Chaka wants to do a 10. She's an junior in college, and she's highly organized to the point of irritating redundancy -- I only met this girl on Monday, and I already know this. Case in point: After our meeting yesterday, we had to wait on a few things until we could go to next steps. Like Chaka had to get her voicemail set up. So I got a text message last night requesting that I read my email before work tomorrow. First thing: the internet in the sublet doesn't half work. (I don't want to talk about it.) So I can't necessarily check my email when I want to. Second thing: NO. This morning, Chaka asks me if I checked my email, and I explained about the first thing (therefore skirting around the second thing) and she handed me a print-out of her email, which was a three-paragraph memo about her voicemail, offering instructions to us about how we should proceed with our work in the event that (a) her voicemail is set up within the next day, or (2) if her voicemail is not set up within the next day.

It's not a good idea to irritate me at 9:30 in the morning, five minutes after I've lugged a 10-pound laptop bag across the city because my workspace in unworkable and I have to provide my own work-around. I KNEW I wasn't awake, I KNEW I was grumpy, and what did I decide to do anyway? I decided to make a deal about it. You ever do that? Do you ever hear yourself pick a completely unnecessary mini-fight when what you really need to do is shut your mouth? And twenty minutes later, when I had caffeine and actually read the thing, it was much less obnoxious. It was in my INBOX and therefore didn't need to be in my HAND, but whatever. And so I had to send my little apology email.

In conclusion, I can see this girl is going to come up with some ideas about unnecessary work, and I can see that I'm gonna need to gently set some boundaries. (1) I will not be responding to work emails after work hours. Not even if you send me a text about it. And not even if I actually read it and thought about it. You'll get my response at 11am tomorrow. (2) I'm coming up with nice ways of saying, "I'm not doing that." Because I'm 26 years old, you and I are both interns, and even my mother doesn't tell me what to do anymore.

Packing up the last third SUCKS.

Okay, I leave for DC on Saturday at 9:30am. It is now 4:30am on Thursday. (Do not ask about my sleeping/waking schedule. I couldn't explain, anyway.) Between now and then, I must:
a) pack my bags for the summer;
b) pack everything else in my room and move it into storage (just downstairs, thank heaven);
c) finish this 25-30 page research paper, which was actually due yesterday, and is still hovering at about 23 pages. I think I'm too old to play with margins, but in about two hours, it may come to that;
d) do all of the last-minute errands like getting my mail forwarded, returning dozens of library books, washing last-minute laundry, etc.

I am slightly concerned. But I think that if I can just get this goddamned paper finished, then I can send it in (with an apologetic email), and I can just stay awake until Saturday. 'Cause you don't need a full night's sleep to stand in line at the post office, right?

I feel like I just created terrible karma for myself. What I really mean is, bless the Smithsonian, bless the Museum of the Moving Image, and bless the Paley Center for Media. But still, they better recognize.

All the stupid, stupid internship applications are done and submitted. I cannot believe how much time I had to invest in a process in which I asked others to allow them to take advantage of my mad skillz for 40 hours a week for ten weeks, for free. Stupid Smithsonian, stupid Museum of the Moving Image, stupid Paley Center for Media. You better recognize.