jtrain351209

I am considering doing a congressional internship this summer. My congressman has an office not far from my home town, but I kind of want to do the internship in Washington. Is it worth the extra money to do the internship in DC, or should I just do it at the home office?

ThePhilosopher

In terms of what... graduate admissions? Future jobs? Working in either office won't make a difference in terms of those, per say. The major difference will be the people you are working with, and probably what exactly the focus of the office is.

TheDad

My D did both, different years, one Senate (DC) and one House (in-district, nearby district). You can get useful experience in both locations and part of the luck of the draw---or how you present yourself---is what assignments you get. More substantive work locally beats photocopying in D.C.

In DC, D was assigned to press relations and while there was an awful lot of clipping newpapers and preparing digests, she earned some progressively better writing assignments. She also had the best work ethic (imho) as near as I could tell out of her intern group and started getting the elite low-end tasks...not an oxymoron. E.g., when the Senator had personal friends who wanted a tour of the Capitol, D got the assignment. About work ethic: some of her intern peers did some *really* dumb things, like talking about supervisors and other people in their office while at lunch...and not having a clue as to who was at the surrounding tables within earshot. (Hint: you never know, so don't do it.)

Most in-state/district offices have a lot of the ho-hum constituent work but opportunities like being part of a staff delegation to this, that, or the other thing in the district can be useful, everything from a military change-of-command ceremony to a presentation on local transportation issues. Again, as an intern you can earn benefits: D was allowed to start sitting in on staff conference calls from the Congressman in DC with the stipulation that she not say a word...topics might have included sensitive stuff the Congressman might not have wanted interns to be in on but the district manager thought it would be good background for D on several issues.

DC has to be experienced to be understood and I recommend it highly. There's also a trade-off between House and Senate. House members are short-staffed enough that you stand a better chance of getting to do more substantive work part of the time to go along with the usual grunt work; however, the Senate is the big leagues to the House's AAA (institutional bias anyone?) and if you keep yours ears open, your eyes open, and your mouth shut, you can learn an awful lot there.

A bit of a ramble and in some ways contradictory. But there you have it.