This week marks my second week being in Washington, DC and the first week of my senior year of college. After being at Arizona State University for three years, this cross-country trip to the nation’s capitol marks the first semester I will not be returning to Arizona. As part of ASU’s McCain Institute Policy & Design program, I am to be in Washington, DC, participating in a course that is designed to give the students real world knowledge and experience on the challenges that come with national and global policy in a number of areas. Along with this course, the students are to obtain an internship in the area with an organization of their choice that generally revolves around their interests.
This leads me to how I ended up with Center for Education Reform. As a Public Service and Public Policy student in the W.P. Carey School of Business at ASU, my main interests lie with education reform and CER turned out to be my top choice when applying to a numerous amount of internships over this past summer. This week also marks only my first week with CER, which means learning about the organization’s ins and outs and what my daily tasks will be.
During my time here in Washington, DC, I hope to gain extensive knowledge in many areas, including policy design, education reform as a whole, and even the DC metro lines. I have been to DC, parts of Maryland and northern Virginia multiple times in my life as I have the majority of my family living in these areas. I hope to familiarize myself with this region of the East Coast just as I have with the West. I could quite possibly be calling this area ‘home’ in the near future.