Getting It Right: How to Make the Most of Your DC Internship

In every organization, outside every coffee shop, around every corner in Washington, D.C., the question relentlessly rises: “What’s your advice for how to make the most of my internship in D.C.?” During my years in the Beltway, I fielded this question literally hundreds of times.  

Perhaps, for some interns, this is a filler question—a way to get the conversation started after following people’s advice to “set up coffee meetings,” “network,” and “get to know as many people as you can.” That’s an OK motivation. For others, however, the question is heartfelt and pressing, even existential. After all, as an intern, you just spent some part of your birthright uprooting yourself from home and college, traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to an intimidating new city, living and working with utter strangers. It had better be worth it!  

If only there was a straightforward guide for making the most of your time as an intern in Washington, D.C. … Below, I’ve distilled some of my most recycled tips for what YOU can do to ensure you reap every reward and blessing from this investment in your future.   

Put Down Roots  

It’s so easy to see your internship as a short blip on the radar—a diversion from normal life—an anomaly to be treated as such. For some, this may be the case. For many others, you may find the internship is your first step toward making Washington your home or your regular stomping ground. Regardless, make sure you don’t sacrifice your own rootedness for the temporary thrill of a new place. Identify what is good and permanent in your home and college life and find ways to cultivate that in D.C. Make friends. Stay healthy and fit. Discover the local hangouts and hideouts. Cultivate your love of place. After all, you don’t become any less human or any less yourself just because your address changes.  

Think Long Term  

Internships are semester-long job interviews. They shouldn’t take place in a vacuum, and you shouldn’t plan to return to life as usual upon your return from one. Your internship may reveal strengths, weaknesses, and interests you didn’t know you have but which have massive relevance to your aspirations. While in D.C., take advantage of the concentration of resources to meet people and ask them about their work, attend lectures, and be introspective and observant about the work you’re doing vs. what you see others doing.  

Meet with counselors, advisers, and mentors (professional and informal) who have unique insights into the town secrets. Come away with a mental encyclopedia of people’s bios, pathways, and strategies you wish to emulate or simply learn from. And most importantly, do your job excellently so people who know you can’t wait for you to return.  

Explore the City  

No matter how awesome your internship is, there is more that Washington has to offer. And while visiting world-renowned sites like the Capitol, Washington Monument, or the National Gallery (objectively the best Smithsonian) is great, that’s not what I’m referring to. I’m talking about attending a concert at the Kennedy Center, playing in a softball league, or strolling through Roosevelt Island or the Billy Goat Trail. I’m talking about the bottomless feast of lectures, receptions, reading groups, and themed events across the city.  

On any given evening, a luminary you care about is being featured at some college or organization in the Beltway. Keep an eye out for attending events that interest you and meeting like-minded young people. Oh, and did I mention there’s often food at these gatherings? 

Find a Church and Invest in It  

This follows from the first point. Yes, I understand sometimes finding a fitting house of worship can be a time-intensive process, but to the extent possible, find a church home and get to know people there ASAP. There are lots of great options in the city. Washington is a city of many vices and temptations. Some are more obvious than others. Some appear to be easy to dodge, while others are like parasites to the heart, and you won’t know until they’ve sunk their teeth into your motivations and self-conception and they’ve set you on a gilded path toward destruction.  

You’re going to establish a social circle in D.C.: Make sure at its core is a committed church fellowship and the slow, life-giving drip of truth into your veins. If some of those friends are established families with homes you can visit, even better! 

Be Humble  

I get it. You’ve worked hard to get to this moment. You’ve set yourself apart, and now you get to reap the benefits in the form of a competitive internship in a star-studded town. It’s natural to feel some gratification in this. Just remember that pride is the shortcut to all the worst vices.  

Moreover, no matter how much you’ve done and how many accolades you’ve accumulated, someone nearby has done more. And that’s a good thing: D.C. is an aspirational city and that competition can be healthy. But choose to humble yourself to learn from the people around you. Signal to your colleagues and employers that you want to grow. People will respect that, and they’ll want to lend a hand.  

Be Confident in What You Offer  

This may sound like it conflicts with the previous point, but just as pride can be considered a vice, so can reluctance to acknowledge or use one’s gifts. In fact, I might argue that being chronically self-conscious or pearl-clutching of one’s abilities is its own type of pride. But I digress …  

Perhaps you find yourself a week into your internship and it seems everyone attends more prestigious schools than you do, has a higher GPA, leads more student groups, networks better, has more in-demand skills than you do. Or perhaps, you’ve been absolutely crushing it at a prestigious university, and suddenly people around you oscillate between treating you as a Fabergé egg and seeking to tear you down. No matter. You’re in Washington because you have something to offer.  

You’ve been accepted into your program because your skills complement the work of the organization or institution that hired you. If the hiring managers didn’t think you had something to offer, they would have passed you over for someone else. So don’t let self-consciousness and insecurity sideline you or curb your enthusiasm.  

Don’t Do Anything Stupid  

I’ll say it because someone needs to. The actions you take and the activities you participate in will follow you, so give a few seconds of extra thought before occupying your time with anything questionable. Washington is a small town, and there’s a good chance that if something’s bad for your soul, it will also be bad for your reputation. People talk, and if you’re not careful, news of an indiscretion could pass down a game of telephone you never could have imagined (or perhaps you chose not to imagine).  

Your internship semester should be fun, and you shouldn’t tiptoe down its corridors with the burden of fear, but you should absolutely be discerning. There’s no time like the present to work out the “good judgment” muscle.  

An internship in the nation’s capital can be a life-changing experience. I’ve watched young upstarts turn into key players over and over and over again. I’ve watched the city glow with new energy at the start of each semester. D.C. denizens are eager to pour into your internship experience. So dive right in and make the most of it! It could be that key proving ground you look back on … with gratitude … for the rest of your life.  

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