This summer, I had the opportunity to dive deeper into my future professional career as a Washington, D.C. intern at the Washington Center (TWC). Once admitted into The Washington Center, I accepted a position with The Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) as an audio/video intern. This was a unique experience, as The Washington Center acted as a residential academic facility, where I took a career development course and a media management course, whereas ADST was the site that I worked for full-time throughout the summer. Not only did I get to have a full-time internship, but I was also enrolled in two courses, which only enhanced my overall experience and gave me an opportunity of a lifetime. Starting a new internship in a new city was quite the challenge, but having the stability of classes like I do at school made me feel a lot more comfortable with my schedule.

 

The Washington Center is an independent, non-profit residential academic facility based in NoMa, Washington, D.C. They provide internship opportunities to students who otherwise may not have the chance to establish their path to a professional future. TWC has hosted students from hundreds of colleges across the United States and young professionals from over twenty-five countries. This is a very diverse community full of students who are seeking to experience what a successful career looks like. TWC encourages their students to get involved in the community, seek opportunities to network, and become more socially engaged. They are one of the largest internship programs of their kind with about 90 full-time staff members and over 600 higher education, corporate, government, foundation and internship host partners. Being founded in 1975, they have over 60,000 alumni who have flourished into professionals who work for the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

 

TWC’s academic internship program gave me an unforgettable experience this summer, and I will be walking out with valuable professional knowledge that I will be able to carry with me throughout the rest of my college and professional careers. As a TWC intern, I was assigned to complete two academic courses throughout the course of the summer: a career readiness course and a media management course. I fount the career readiness course particularly helpful in preparing me for my professional career, as it provided various modules, preparing me in both the career launch and career dynamics aspect of my future professional career. These modules covered a range of topics such as salary negotiation, personal budgeting, decoding the workplace, and many more. During this course, I had to complete seven of these career development modules, two informational interviews, a capstone reflection, and an e-portfolio. All of these assignments have had great educational and development value, providing me with essential knowledge to reference in the future.

 

The other class requirement for TWC was a Media Management class. Before starting my internship, I was able to choose which class I was interested in, and was lucky enough to get into this class, as it was my first choice. I attended this class every Tuesday for three hours. Media Management was a valuable class in preparing me for the workplace in the future. My professor, Mr. McDonald, taught my class a lot about how to manage a business and be a good leader in the workplace. Throughout the course of the semester, my group had to create a fictional start-up business to present on the last day of class. While developing our start-up, Mr. McDonald provided highly informational lectures on how to budget for our start-up, how to deal with conflict in the workplace, ways to raise capital for your company, etc. I really enjoyed this class and I feel as if it gave me a lot of insight into the business side of communications, which I haven’t had much experience in yet. Taking these classes opened up new opportunities for me on top of working full-time for a new internship site.

 

Aside from courses taken at TWC, I also served as an audio/video intern for the Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training. ADST was founded in 1986 by retired Foreign Service officers and has been capturing, preserving, and sharing the experiences of America’s Diplomats. They hold the world’s largest collection of U.S. diplomatic oral history, having over 2,500 oral histories from the past 80 years and counting. ADST’s mission is to enhance public appreciation of the contributions that diplomacy has had nationally and internationally. On top of oral histories, ADST also has over 800 “Moments” in history, derived from oral histories, that highlight key historical events. They also contribute in facilitating the publication of books and memoirs for U.S. Foreign Service officers and America’s Diplomats.

 

I was extremely pleased with my time at ADST, as I got to spend most of the summer editing various podcast episodes across four different podcast series. Although ADST is known for the largest collection of oral histories, they also capture diplomat experiences through their podcasts: Modern American Diplomacy, Partners in Diplomacy, and In Their Own Voices. The fourth podcast is called the Cold War Podcast, providing historical background on the events on the cold war. Working on these podcast episodes was exactly what I wanted to do this summer, as I major in communications media studies with a focus on audio production. It allowed me to learn a brand new software and get more comfortable with normalization and equalization of audio. This internship was fully remote, but the ADST staff is very accustomed to working remotely, making it a smooth process for us interns to get used to. We had frequent intern and all-staff meetings which allowed us to build a professional, remote community. My supervisor and chief technology officer, James Fowler, and I had one-on-one meetings one to two times a week to check in with each other and go over my assignments, which was very helpful in keeping me accountable while working remotely.

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Overall, my internship experience was surreal, and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work in Washington, D.C. All summer, I was exposed to new experiences in a new city. The Washington Center provided me with a fantastic academic experience, giving me the opportunity to build upon my professional abilities, career development, and media management skills. ADST was a welcoming and well-developed environment where I was able to accomplish my goal of enhancing my audio production abilities. All of these skills will be carried out in my last few semesters at IUP, and onto my future professional career in audio production.