Introduction to the Washington Center and Washington DC

This is for all of you who are truly wondering what I am doing when I say I am in Washington D.C. doing an internship. Well I am here for a semester, and I understand that this blog is a little late, considering I am done in like a month. But anyway, Dr. Bloodworth asked me to do this, here it goes. I am not going to write much I am going to try and just do a bunch of pictures with a comment for each. I think that will better explain exactly how it works here, and what I see everyday and each weekend. This is actually the most I will write. I am a senior at Gannon, and I am here in DC doing an internship with the Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, with their International Studies program. This means that when I am not working at my internship site, I am taking two classes of my choosing at night, which are set up in a seminar style and are taught by people who work in the field of the class that they are teaching. For example I am taking a Peace and Social Justice class where my teacher has worked for the Washington Post and has interviewed just about everybody in the Peace-building profession, my other class is International Human Rights, where my teacher is the director of African Human Rights with Amnesty International.
In addition to these classes my program also has what are called "Monday Programming" where each Monday we go to different places (i.e. an Embassy, or a seminar) to discuss different topics in international relations. I am here for 3 1/2 months and it is probably the most amazing experience ever. You learn so much about what you want to do, and you get to be immersed in so many different areas of professional work.
My internship is with the Peace Alliance, and rather than explaining it all here, I am just going to send you to a link about what we do, www.thepeacealliance.com. Basically I work with the Student Peace Alliance where I get to set up meetings with Congress people and other key organizations, and a lot of the time I am leading these meetings. A good example is when we met with Afterschool Alliance, and I basically led the meeting that forged an alliance between our two organization. With the Washington Center you can work anywhere from a government position in the State Department, or a local nonprofit.
This experience is an amazing one and I encourage anyone to do it, because it has amazing opportunities at every turn, and you learn so much more than you would in any traditional class. The Washington Center also teaches you how to act more professionally and also helps you to look for jobs once you are done. Well that is all I have for now, soon I will be putting up a ton of pics from the last two months. So for now, peace.