Internships: Slave Labor with Resume Building Potential!

During the same lunch date where I bit into a pepperoncini and its juice squirted across the table and could have burned an unfortunate eye of someone if they were in my line of fire, I learned the true circumstance of my intern position on the hill. Of course, I did not need someone else to tell me that my work sucked and was far from the "intensive research" opportunity that I had signed up for, but my friend Becca, who interned for a Senator when she was my age, broke it down for me.

"You are a staff assistant. You just aren't getting paid for it."

What is a staff assistant? Why, it is the person who:
-takes calls, and the verbal abuse that comes with them
-organizes mail and faxes
-gives tours of the capital, in heels
-uses the IQ system to produce constituent mail responses and helps stuff them

Thats me!


To think I could be paid for all of this! Sure, sometimes they throw me a bone, like updating a response letter or writing a congressional record (on a deceased marijuana rights activist, no less!), but it doesn't hide the fact that I am an unpaid staff assistant under the title of an intern, and I have to have a different colored ID pass because of it. And part of me did take comfort in leading a tour for two good-hearted Northeast Ohioan women through the capital, where we discussed "the Bucks" and perogies, which they called "very ethnic." Oh, Ohio, you are just the limit!

Needless to say, I am moving on to a greener lawn than this hill gig.

The tragedy of this whole affair is that I never even got to meet the Honorable Dennis Kucinich, between his trip to Syria (which created a hell for all the interns in his presidential campaign and congressional office), campaigning, and what have you, was never at the office when I was. The closest I got to having contact with Elizabeth was talking to her on the phone, where I immediately recognized her accent and had a flutter of celebrity crush, only to be instructed in her kind but crisp voice to transfer her to the press secretary. Oh, Elizabeth, you are so cruel! All I wanted was a photo-op with you and your husband...and months of opportunities to talk to you about our shared religious studies background and hair and peace and be your personal intern and...sigh. I am such a sucker!

I also wanted to snag a copy of Hustler with Kucinich's name on it, but now that I have inside connections, perhaps I can still get that souvenir, at least. But I can't help to think that even that would be a small consolation to my brief time in the office. All I have now is a complimentary letter opener and some post-it notes. So much for that endeavor, but I will still keep my eye out for a short over-the-hill man and his taller and elegant red-haired wife while I am here. I will have my camera ready.