Find paid internship or part time job for the fall

After 2 days at the Center for American Progress, I think I can mark this goal complete!

:)

Incidentally, I have also been very busy the past couple days, hence my complete lack of activity on 43T. I promise I’ll come back soon.

The Center for American Progress called me back yesterday – I start on Monday!

:-D

{just like with my last internship goal, I’m not going to mark this complete until I ACTUALLY start.}

I had another interview for an internship today. This one was at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. Good stuff.

So I go to my interview, get off the elevator, and there’s people standing around EVERYWHERE, just kind of standing. I walk over to the office and I hear a speech being given. Walk inside…and there’s Senator John Edwards himself, just giving a speech a glass wall away from where I’m standing. Umm…cool!

I didn’t get to hear very much of his speech, cause I actually had to get interviewed (“We can’t drag this out horribly long, Senator Edwards needs this room to do an interview”). I didn’t actually talk to the woman who’s in charge of the internships (she was helping with the Senator’s thing, as was the vast majority of the office). I talked with the director of the Strategic Planning Committee (the committee I’d actually be working with), and she basically all but told me I had the internship (the aforementioned woman who couldn’t be there is apparently the only one who can formally offer me an internship). So yeah. I’m just waiting for a phone call.
:-D

So I interviewed for an internship with the US Association of Former Members of Congress today. Fairly straightforward interview. I guess I have the internship if I want it. However, this internship would be unpaid, and since the main point of my seeking employment this semester is to save money to go abroad, I really don’t think I can or should take an unpaid internship. Especially since I do have some experience and I ended up getting paid for my summer internship…I don’t want to take a pay cut.

The think tank I’m interviewing with on Monday pays, or at least I’m pretty sure they do. We’ll see how that goes. {crosses fingers}

So remember how I said I snail-mailed an application to one place YESTERDAY? Dropped the thing in the mailbox at 4:20 yesterday, the mailbox told me mail got picked up at 4:30. The place I sent it to called me back TODAY. Less than 24 hours later. I’m in shock. I’ve had emails that weren’t received that fast! So, here’s my shout out to the US Postal Service. You rock. Cheers.

So anyways, the place I’m referring to here would be the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. They have a whole bunch of department that hire interns, so on the intern application you’re supposed to pick your top 3 program choices. Mine were International Programs (I am an International Affairs major, after all), Domestic Programs, and External Affairs (like relations with other think tanks and the government and all sorts of other organizations). The program that actually called me back was the Strategic Planning Department – apparently my top 3 choices all already had interns, but the International program gave the Strategic Planning people my resume and said I looked like I’d be a good intern or something to that effect. I missed their call the first time (my stupid dorm has no cell phone reception) but I when I called them back (I was sitting on a sidewalk in the middle of a farmers market, with a pastry I’d just purchased in French sitting on my lap) I talked to the director of the program and their current intern. They both sounded absurdly excited to be talking to me and were very intent on making me excited about Strategic Planning as well. It sounds cool, with Strategic Planning I’d be dealing with all the other programs the Center has and I could go to meetings and events for all the other programs, so I could still be involved with the international stuff. They also said it’s quite common for interns for their department to be hired into other departments. But anyways, I have an interview there Monday. That one I’m almost certain is paid.

Sooooo…it looks like I could actually achieve this goal! :-)

Sooooo the internship I really wanted…the one that paid well…yeah, apparently the guy they had as the contact person to send application stuff to…doesn’t work there anymore. I emailed the guy last week, since I kind of expected to hear back about about the internship by now, and I got an automatic response saying he no longer worked there. It gave the name of somebody else to contact in his place…but no contact information for her. So I emailed the general info address to ask about the internship, but haven’t heard back.
{sigh}
I sent out two more applications today. One’s for the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. It’s paid, and I guess there’s like 20 openings. I’d be ok with that one, but I dunno, I would rather have one that more directly related to international affairs-ish-type-stuff. The other was an internship that my friend Adam had before and told me about, its for the US Association of Former Members of Congress. I emailed them a little before 4 with my resume and a really quick half-assed cover letter, and they emailed me back like 45 minutes later to set up an interview. So I have an interview. I don’t know if that internship’s paid or not though, and I really need a paid internship to save money to study abroad next semester.

If I end up finding an internship that’s unpaid, I might see if I can work there only a few hours a week, and then see if Borders will hire me for a few hours. The Borders near school, last I checked, had a “Hiring” sign up, so I figure I can walk in and be like “Hey, I worked for a Borders Express over the summer, hire me.” I just don’t know how that would work with me going back to the BE at home for Black Friday and Christmas.

So yeah. I have an interview. Progress, no?

I applied for a few internships. I got rejected from a couple that I didn’t expect to get anyways, and a couple others I applied too late for. I’m still waiting for this one internship that I would absolutely love to get – it’s with a nonprofit along the same lines as the one I was with this summer, it’s really close to campus, and it pays sweeeeeet money. Still waiting to hear back on that, but the deadline to apply was the end of August so I’m not worried yet. If I can’t find a paid internship, then I’ll try to find a job, cause I need money. Especially if I study abroad next semester. I sent my resume to the study abroad office today. I’ll keep posting on how this goes…