The first lasts

Last President’s Lecture Series, last book I will start here, last time I will buy a cereal box. These days seem to be the beginning of the end of this experience. It sucks thinking I will not see the Capitol every day, that I will not see a squirrel every five yards, that I will not fight over the A/C with my roommates and many other things, but it is also exciting to think of my future plans and the doors that my new resume will open.

This I will not miss, this is a little hill we have to go through every time we go to the Metro. Everyone in Grosvernor Tower can tell you about “the hill."


We have to walk a few minutes to go to the Metro, but the cool thing is that the view is good, you get to see squirrels a lot and ducks at night.

On our way to the Metro

Another thing I will miss from here is the fact that you are always meeting new interesting people. The other night I was talking with some Mexican friends, and we started talking about Mexican politics. I have never been so happy to hear all those familiar names instead of all the people I hear of all the time here in the US, most of whom I know nothing about. In this talk I got to see a lot of different points of view of my friends; it was strange because we hadn’t discussed politics and I just assumed they had the same views as I did. It was cool to see how different we are.

One of The Washington Center program’s activities during the semester is the Public Policy Dialogues on Capitol Hill, which is to meet with member of Congress from your state or their staffs. The foreigners participate as well. I got to meet with Bill Parsons, legislative director to Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, because Chris Van Hollen was too busy. The girl from TWC who was organizing the dialogues told us to do some research about the representative and to prepare some questions. I actually thought it was going to be boring or difficult to understand for me, but it turned out to be quite interesting. We talked a lot about energy and where the US needs to invest in order to be a more energy independent country (not to import as much oil as they do now), like in new types of cars (hybrid, electric) and other sources of energy that do not compete with food like ethanol. At the end, Bill Parsons talked about how he got to his position and asked us who would like to work in the Hill. Two girls said they were interested, and he said he would give them a contact person. That’s what I like about TWC’s activities, they are always a chance to meet someone that can help you in your career.

And speaking of career, another thing we had to do for the Washington Center is an interview of someone that has a position that we would like to have in a company in the future. With the help of the internet and my roommate that is interning with National Geographic, I chose Kara Marston, who is in charge of a lot of the digital marketing that Nat Geo does. When she told me the responsibilities she had in her job, she described my perfect job. Everything that she does there is what I love about marketing, and the agency, National Geographic, is the place where I would like the most to work after graduating, so this interview was very interesting for me.