What You've All Been Waiting For...

WOW. 2 posts in one day. I can't handle myself right now!

As promised, here is Arleta's List of Top 10 Moments as an Intern! I figured two weeks was more than enough time to incur enough awkward intern moments to warrant a blog post...

Without further ado...

TOP 10 WASHINGTON, DC INTERN MOMENTS:

1. Dressing way nicer than is necessary on the first day - of course NO ONE wants to be the most underdressed intern on the first day, so everyone dresses in absolutely the nicest thing they own. Not that it's a bad thing, but it's always an easy way to separate the interns from the staff! Depending on the intensity of the intern's personality, this whole dressing way nicer than is necessary thing may last the whole first week, or even the first two weeks.

2. Wearing heels to work without bringing an extra pair of shoes - this really only applies to girls, and it kind of goes along with #1. Of course, every girl wants to be seen as professional, but it doesn't hurt to look cute - I mean, that's how they dress in "The Devil Wears Prada!" So of course, you coordinate your whole outfit, right down to the shoes (I myself was reppin' the UGA colors: white top, black skirt, red shoes). One problem: the shoes may feel fine when you try them on in the store, or even in your room while you're getting ready. But try walking to the metro, waiting for the train, standing on the crowded train, walking uphill to work, walking to lunch, and doing it all over again in reverse. Yeah, not fun. Needless to say almost everyone who's been an intern for a day or more brings two pairs of shoes to work.

3. Arriving insanely early to work - again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it just further separates the interns from the old hands. Even though I had perfectly timed my commute, I left a little before 8:20am on my first day and arrived to work over 2o minutes early, aka before the staff had arrived. I had been so worried that I wouldn't make it if I didn't catch the 8:20 train to Capitol South that I'm pretty sure I elbowed a few children to get on the train. Not my proudest moment. Turns out I couldn't even get into the building (officially) since I didn't have my badge! Fortunately for me, my co-interners are similarly ambitious and thus I was not alone! Needless to say I have adjusted my commute accordingly.

4. Wearing your badge all the time - some of you will remember my post about interns on the train and the importance of wearing one's badge (which blatantly says INTERN regardless of where you work, meaning we are all equally pathetic) in a highly visible area. Well, this does not necessarily just apply to the metro. One may observe interns wandering the halls of their place of business frantically searching for their badges so they can go to lunch. There are those interns who always forget their badges and are thus always having to be "claimed" by someone else to get back into the building, and there are those who wear them on their person AT ALL TIMES.

5. Being afraid to talk about work (or anything, for that matter) in public - again, this is not necessarily a bad thing! In a city like DC, you can never be too careful about talking about work in public since you never know who is standing behind you at any of the many Starbucks-es! (I've never been sure what the plural of Starbucks is...) But, my fellow interns and I spent the first week petrified that a reporter was going to sneak up on us and force us to relay sensitive information to the byline-hungry press! (And as someone who is rooming with said press intern, I'm constantly worried about wiretaps and misquotes!)

6. Thinking you left your wallet at work when you get to the metro and spending 45 frustrating minutes searching your cubicle and the Longworth House Building Cafeteria for it only to find that it slipped to the bottom of your purse. ... this one needs no explanation.

7. Calling someone who is two years older than you "sir" or "maam" - while it is always important to show deference to any and all staff members when you are an intern, it's hard to remember that some of these people who have "real" jobs are not that much older than we are! Meaning we're that much closer to the "real world." Maybe that's just the southerner coming out in me, but I feel that if there's a chance that the person I'm talking to is five minutes older than I am, they deserve to be called "sir" or "maam!"

8. Jamming the scanner at work - while not a big deal once you are established at the office, as an intern it is both expected that you will screw up a piece of office equipment, but it is also highly embarrassing. But once you do it, you just have to suck it up, admit to your intern mistake, and find someone to fix it. Or, just find someone to fix it and pretend like it was broken when you got there...

9. Thinking that because I'm from Georgia I can handle the DC humidity - ok guys. I've already admitted to being a metro snob. But I never thought of myself as a southern snob...we'll save the regional snobbery to people from places like New York, LA, and Texas (note to my LA and New York friends...I love you!). But I found myself saying on numerous occasions, "yeah this weather is hot, but I'm from Atlanta so I'm used to it!" While I appreciated every single person who told me that DC was humid, I secretly thought to myself, "you clearly would not last a day in the South!" But when I actually started living here, I realized that the DC humidity is MIS-ER-A-BLE. I guess I forgot that DC is literally a swamp. I'd take Atlanta humidity over this any day!

10. Getting excited when a presidential motorcade drives by - clearly, waiting on a street corner for an hour and a half waiting for the president's motorcade to pass by for five seconds is an obvious intern move. I feel like you never really get over seeing the president, but seeing his motorcade the first week being here was a pretty awesome intern moment!

I'm sure I'll have even more intern moments as the summer goes on, but here's the list two weeks in! And since halftime for the USA-England soccer match is almost over, I'll leave you with this: USA! USA! USA!!