Angela Guois a junior at Rice University in Houston. At the time of the interview, she was a summer internat ThinkProgress, an award-winning political blog founded in 2005. ThinkProgress is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Guo is also a research intern at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice and is vice president of Rice’s Pre-Law Society. She previously had internships with the U.S. Department of Justice and with From the Top, a National Public Radio program that showcases young musicians. She is from Johns Creek, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.

Faith Shapirois a junior at Rice University, where she is majoring in philosophy and policy studies, with a minor in poverty, justice, and human capabilities. At the time of the interview, she was a legislative intern in the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington Legislative Office. She has been president of the Rice University ACLU chapter and has held internships with a community organization in New Orleans, the Journal of Feminist Economics, and a Houston-based literacy organization—in addition to her ongoing involvement in a college-based community service organization. She is from Tenafly, New Jersey.

An estimated 20,000 interns descend on Washington, DC, each summer to work for members of Congress, federal agencies, the White House, and, of course, interest groups. All are there to learn and get the experience needed to build their résumés for a future job. In this chapter, Shapiro and Guo talk about why they chose an internship that involved political advocacy.

Beth Leech: Angela, this summer you are working as an intern for the Center for American Progress [CAP], right?

Angela Guo: Yes. Although to be more specific, because they like to differentiate between the two, I am working at CAP’s sister organization, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, not the Center for American Progress per se. But they’re both under the same umbrella.

Leech: And how is CAP Action different?

Guo: CAP Action has more of a political agenda than CAP itself. CAP itself is just a progressive think tank. They promote progressive values. They do not openly support one party or another. Whereas at CAP Action, we are allowed to do a lot more grassroots, actually advocating for something—a party, a side, a specific candidate, anything like that.

Leech: How did you end up there? How did you get interested in doing such a thing in Washington?

Guo: I am here through the Baker Institute for Political Policy, which is Rice’s think tank. It is a nonpartisan think tank in Houston that sends twelve students to DC every summer and funds them to be here. It is a blast. And as part of that, we have to find our own full-time internships.

And so for me, I have always been really interested in progressive politics in the Democratic Party, basically. At school, I am really involved with Young Democrats. So I thought coming to DC would be a good option, where I would be doing something that I would personally want to do and where I agree with the message.

I knew that CAP is a big liberal think tank. And I had a couple of friends who did work with ThinkProgress in years past, and they told me that they thought I would really like the environment there.

Leech: So the Baker Institute pays your expenses and also pays you a stipend?

Guo: They pay us a stipend that goes toward our expenses. It covers all of our living expenses, and food, and transportation, and whatnot.

Leech: That is great. You are much luckier than many interns. Most of them aren’t paid at all. So how about you, Faith?

Faith Shapiro: I am here through Rice’s ACLU club. I am also technically a paid intern through a stipend from a Rice alumnus who is very involved with the ACLU. She funds one Rice student to intern at the Washington Legislative Office every summer.

Leech: How did you get involved with the ACLU on campus in the first place, and what do you do for them?

Shapiro: Community service is actually a big part of my life, and I am very interested in public policy in terms of advocacy for marginalized communities or populations. So my interests are very much in line with the ACLU. I know my boss once said that the people whose rights we have to work hardest to protect are the minority, because they are the ones who are often subject to the whims of the majority, even though that is not supposed to be the case. And so my personal values are very closely in line with the ACLU.

Leech: How many Rice interns are there this summer all over DC? Do you know?

Guo: This year I think we have twenty-five-ish.

Shapiro: Right. But there are also other interns not necessarily affiliated with politics or policy, who have business- or research-related internships.

Leech: And so do you end up seeing these other Rice interns and/or other interns who are not from Rice?

Shapiro: All the time. Obviously, DC has a huge intern culture, especially over the summer. I am living in the dorms at George Washington University, and it has a lot of other interns living there, so I have met interns from not only different universities within the United States, but from all over the world. My suitemate goes to Trinity College in Ireland.

Leech: Besides in the dorms, how do you meet other interns?

Shapiro:At work. So, for instance, here at the ACLU office, although there are not a lot of undergraduate interns, there are a couple. And if you meet them at your office, you probably also share common interests, and so that lends a feeling of camaraderie as well.

Guo: Under the whole CAP umbrella, we have about eighty to ninety interns. And they are all undergrads. And it is a blast because we have an intern softball team, various intern events, happy hours—things like that that we are consistently invited to. It’s a great way to meet people, just being at CAP, because there are so many other people who share the same interests. And they are all from a variety of different schools. And then in my dorm suite at GW [George Washington University], I have four roommates from various schools. Two of my roommates are from Princeton, one is from Yale, and two of us are from Rice.

Leech: My impression was that most political interns in DC were not funded. Some of them are even paying tuition.

Shapiro: Well, in my experience, a lot of the people I have spoken to actually are funded. I find that, oftentimes, a lot of Hill interns are not funded. So a lot of the “Hillterns” working for congressmen or senators are not funded. But their internships also tend to be shorter. I know a typical Hill internship is about six weeks.

Leech: Are these people with funding almost always like you, bringing in their money from outside, or are there still organizations in DC that are paying their interns?

Guo: Actually, CAP pays interns pretty well, I would say, compared to most other organizations around. “Hillterns” do not generally get funded unless it is by some outside source. But at CAP, they do pay their interns. If you come in with a stipend, they pay you a little bit less. They give you another stipend. But if you come in with no funding at all, they pay you by the hour.

Leech: That is good to know. So what are your backgrounds? How did you get interested in policy advocacy? Faith, I know you were in the ACLU already, but what about in terms of what you are studying at school and that sort of thing?

Shapiro: So like I said, I had a strong background in community service when I came in to Rice and I want to pursue a career in the public sector, doing public policy or advocacy for a nonprofit organization or an NGO [nongovernmental organization]. At Rice, I am a philosophy and policy studies major, and my minor is in poverty, justice, and human capabilities.

Leech: Is that a set minor or did you get to make up your own?

Shapiro: No, it is a set minor. It is new. We call it PJHC for short but no one knows what it stands for. It is a lot of global development study and poverty studies. It is through the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, so it does have a gender component. But generally speaking, it is essentially our version of poverty studies. And all of that, hopefully, will culminate in some sort of career in terms of social justice or poverty reduction.

In particular, I am really interested in refugee populations and immigrant rights, and also immigration reform in this country, which also relates very well to the ACLU’s mission and some of their projects. So that is how I got interested in public policy, but it started from a community service background where I saw the marginalization of impoverished populations.

I did a lot of work in New Orleans post-Katrina. And as much as Katrina was a natural disaster, I think it was also a disaster of public policy and poor advocacy. And so that is what ultimately got me interested. And then, as I continued at Rice, all of the things that I have been studying have fueled that fire.

Leech: Who were you working with in New Orleans?

Shapiro: I have been there three times now. Originally, I went there on a Mitzvah Corps trip, and we worked with Common Ground Relief, which is a very small grassroots organization. We also worked with the St. Bernard Project and a couple of other nonprofits there. We worked with a lot of different organizations. It was like each day we would work with a different one. When I returned there, it was on an alternative winter break program.

Leech: Through Rice?

Shapiro: No. This one was actually through Young Judaea, which is a Jewish youth movement. Again, we worked with Common Ground through my suggestion because I liked working with them a lot, and a couple of other similar organizations. We worked at soup kitchens.

And then the third time I was there was through Rice Alternative Spring Break, which is a big program through our Community Involvement Center. I worked in schools. It was not rebuilding. It was working within the community. It was great because I got the opportunity to view the community through a different lens—through children. We worked at Head Start schools. I worked at Mahalia Jackson Elementary School, which had just recently been founded. I love New Orleans. New Orleans is a big part of my life. It was the reason I decided to go in the direction I did.

Leech: How about you, Angela?

Guo: I have a very odd path. Growing up in the South, I was always surrounded by conservative ideology. The county I live in is one of the biggest Republican strongholds in the country, and the school that I went to is very, very conservative. I think I started seeing politics and being unhappy with some of the decisions people thought were right. Growing up in that kind of environment, I rebelled against conservative politics and got involved in Young Democrats in middle school. Then I was involved in debate in high school, which I think was a very liberal group.

But then in college, I took a different turn. I started as a music major at Rice in the conservatory. I was a piano performance major and I was really interested in arts advocacy and specifically the fact that many arts organizations are always getting their funding taken away. It really pained me to see it, because I know music is such a big part of my life. So I decided to come to Rice because it had both a solid conservatory and a solid academic setting. But then at Rice, I decided that the direction I thought I wanted to go in was much more public sector—not performance per se for music, but arts advocacy.

When I was looking for internships, I was thinking about applying to both arts advocacy internships and politically active internships. And I think I ended up at ThinkProgress because they told me I could also write with their cultural writer, who does a lot of entertainment and cultural advocacy, which I thought was interesting, while doing social justice issues.

I am a history and public policy major now, but I have always stayed really involved in the arts field. And I think, eventually, I would like to go to law school and potentially work as maybe an arts activist or an arts lobbyist.

Leech: Do you get a chance to play while you are here in DC?

Guo: A little bit. George Washington has a music wing building, so we go there sometimes and hang out. But I think for now, I am definitely much more interested in the reading, writing, and advocating part than the performance.

Leech: Now I am going to ask you each to walk me through an average day. I know average days are sometimes hard to generalize, so maybe you could just tell me what you were doing yesterday, with annotations along the way to let me know how that was weird or usual. Faith, do you want to go first?

Shapiro: Sure. So I come in around nine thirty and check my e-mails. Because I am interning for our director, my internship is a little bit different than maybe some of the other people who work here. I will come in the morning, find out if anything went down after I left the day before—so check my e-mail, check my schedule, check the director’s schedule. Most weeks, I will attend a meeting, either a strategy meeting or a general office meeting, where we discuss the different things that are going on. We also have a number of update e-mails that go out.

And we have the WLO [Washington Legislative Office] Update, which goes out biweekly to all of our affiliates. It talks about what each of our lobbyists is working on that week and the issues that are maybe going up for a vote or hearings that are happening on the Hill that pertain to our issues.

Leech: What comes next in your day?

Shapiro: I help to compile and distribute the WLO Update and I also do some research if we have a particular issue that we are working on as an office. Sometimes, I will be assigned to do research, let’s say, on a pertinent member of the committee that an issue is going to, or someone who has been in the media a lot. With immigration, I may be asked to do background research on someone from the Department of Homeland Security. Or if my boss is speaking on a panel and she needs to be briefed on a certain issue that maybe does not pertain directly to what the ACLU has been working on, but that would be important for her to be well-informed in. So those are ongoing projects that have deadlines peppered throughout. And then otherwise, of course, I also have some general intern duties.

Leech: Describe them. What would your typical intern duties be?

Shapiro: Documents—printing them, sending them out, photocopying them, sorting them. I would not say that that is the majority of the work that I do. I do get a lot of substantive work to do here as well.

Leech: What do you think the thing is that you spend the most time on?

Shapiro: It is hard to say. My tasks are very varied, and I think that probably each day I spend equal amounts of time doing all of those things. I would say though the most time is taken when I am asked to either compile reports or to do writing. So I have assisted in ghostwriting some blog posts on our web site and also in compiling the WLO Update.

Leech: And when you are doing the research, where is most of this information coming from? Where are you going to get the information?

Shapiro: A lot of it does just come generally from the Internet. A lot of it comes from news articles, which I compile together—as I did, for example, when the Supreme Court ruling was expected about SB 1070, the Arizona immigration law, since the ACLU had a stake in that. So I was compiling a lot of news reports on the issue, and analyzing the different sides and developments, and things like that.

Leech: So you collect them and then summarize them?

Shapiro: Yes. Sometimes it will just be collecting them and sending them out saying, “Here is what was reported today.” And sometimes, I will do summaries, depending on the sources. I often do summaries from more DC-based media, like Congressional Quarterly and The Hill, because they will be a lot longer and more esoteric. And then usually news articles are a lot shorter and do not take everyone as long to read. So usually that is just a compilation of articles.

Leech: Angela, tell me about you.

Guo: Well, my internship is very different from most of the interns at CAP or CAP Action. Since I am working on ThinkProgress, which is the liberal blog and the primary media outlet of CAP Action, I get in at eight a.m. every single day. Then all of us in the office—thirty reporters, writers, and editors, and five interns—start going through Google News, Huffington Post, Politico, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. We have thirty to forty tabs open, and we go through and look for all the articles that would be relevant, that we think might be able to go out on our blog. We pull it. We send it on something called PR Core. It is like a listserv except it just goes out to everybody in ThinkProgress. And PR Core moves every other second almost, especially in the mornings when we are compiling and sending, compiling and sending. And then everyone reads all the e-mails that go out through PR Core.

So from about eight to nine a.m. is when we gather all this information and start sending it out. And then at about nine a.m., the editors start going through the articles. They pick up on certain articles and say, “Okay, well, that is really interesting. Why don’t you write that up?” The way it is done in the office is if you found it, you get to write it.

Leech: Nice.

Guo: So it is cool. The interns get to write at least one long blog post a day, and usually a couple of short news flashes as well. Today, I have done two already since it was an interesting news day. What we do is write the news from a progressive standpoint that we feel will be of interest to our progressive readers. A lot of times, we take issues from local newspapers or journals, and we publicize them. For example, sometimes there is a crime that we find completely heinous that has not gotten enough attention, and we will write about it and send it out to our readers.

Leech: So you summarize the story and comment on it? And link to it?

Guo: We will comment and link. A lot of times, what we write gets picked up by a lot of the news sources. MSNBC in particular really likes to pull from ThinkProgress. And they always cite us, which is good. The other thing is the new Aaron Sorkin show, Newsroom, actually admitted to us that they use a ton of ThinkProgress’s materials and they go through our archives and look for things that would go on their show. They recently mentioned us on-air.

We also have very big Twitter and Facebook presences, and so people come for updates all the time throughout the day. So I think the biggest part of the interns’ job at ThinkProgress is going through news articles and constantly being really up-to-date in the news and then writing. We do a lot of writing. So what happens after we draft a post is that it gets sent to the editors, who will look through and make any changes they see fit. Usually, they will not make that many changes. They will just tell us, “Oh, could you write a little bit more about that? Could you give us a little bit more information about that?” And we go back and put in the edits, and then it gets sent out and scheduled to post throughout the week.

So it is really fun. And I work until six or six thirty every single day. So it is a long workday. I know the typical intern at CAP usually works from nine to five or nine to six. But since we have to be there and constantly looking through the news, we go a little bit longer.

Leech: And you are producing every day, right?

Guo: Yes. Usually on Fridays we have to write for the weekend as well. Then on the weekend, we get shifts watching the news. So Friday your job is to watch CNN that night or Saturday.

Leech: You can do that from home, but in case there is something big, you need to be watching. So what happens if there is something big? What do you do?

Guo: If there is something big, PR Core still exists over the weekend. So we are still constantly checking our e-mails over the weekend to see if there any news stories. But usually the editors will take charge of that and they will write something up. Also, something else that is cool: they like to send interns along with a reporter to different interviews or press conferences or events. And that is just something that I think CAP does a lot in general.

The day the health care decision came out, they sent a bunch of interns. ThinkProgress sent two of their interns to go outside the Supreme Court to just talk to people, see why they were there, what they wanted out of the decision. And then later, we were able to join Campus Progress, which is the student wing of CAP Action, in a big rally. So we were holding signs, screaming, chanting. A lot of us actually got on the news, so that was interesting. And I have gone with one of our senior reporters to interview the Democratic whip, Representative Steny Hoyer. We also went to the press conference to interview Jose Antonio Vargas the day the Supreme Court’s Arizona decision was made.

There is another event that CAP has sent all of its interns to. We had to go lobby on the Hill the first week we were here on behalf of student debt. We were able to schedule meetings with our home senator or our home legislative assistant, and we were able to just go and talk to them, and give them packets and tell them why they needed to keep our student debt rates low. So we spent an entire day doing that just on the Hill. It was a lot of fun and we were able to have a rally, too, where there were a lot of senators who did support keeping the student debt rate the way it was.

Leech: That is great that you get to do that. So now that we have heard about both of your days. And Angela, you have pretty much told us the answer to what you spend most of your time doing. What is a short blog post and what is a long one? How long is long and how short is short?

Guo: Short would be about two hundred to two hundred fifty words. We also do things called news flashes, which are very simple—three, four sentences—summarizing something that just came out. We send those out a lot, too. But usually, a longer blog post or a normal post will have a summary of the events and facts—usually a block quote from somebody important affiliated with the story—and then a little bit of commentary at the end. The longer ones can run up to four hundred or five hundred words, but they do not go more than that.

Leech: Faith, what would you say is the most interesting thing you get to do? What is your favorite thing?

Shapiro: There are two things. I do really enjoy the research that I do. I think that because the ACLU is so well versed in the issues they deal with, the research that I get to do is usually sometimes off the beaten path. Like I said, I was asked to do a profile on someone. And it was interesting because I learned so much about a public figure. I do not think that I would ever have delved so deeply otherwise. So a lot of times, my research is just really interesting because it involves looking at these issues from a different viewpoint and much more thoroughly than I ever would get from the news.

Also, I am really lucky to work with Laura Murphy. First of all, she is an incredible boss and she is so kind and warm to me and everyone in the office. Second, I get to see firsthand what it is like to be such a high-ranking individual in a company or an organization that does so much, since I get to work with her directly day to day. And also other people. Chris Calabrese, who is down the hall from me and gave me a Band-Aid last week, was quoted in The New York Times and interviewed on NBC. So it also is really cool to get to meet these people on a personal level, and then to see them out there doing their job—and be in awe of the work they do.

Leech: So your job is very definitely advocacy. As part of it, have you ever been involved in or been brought along on any formal direct lobbying?

Shapiro: I have not, just because I think that a lot of the lobbying that we do, being that we are a very well-connected organization, is pretty high-level. And sometimes it involves sensitive information. I have been privy to press conferences. We had one here when the Supreme Court decision on the Arizona SB 1070 came out. Our executive director stopped by and a bunch of leaders from the civil rights and immigrant communities also stopped by.

We also had a thirtieth anniversary event for Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court case that allowed access to public education for undocumented children. Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez and Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali spoke at that event. Actually, I was in charge of doing the time cards for the speakers in that event, so I got to sit in the front row.

Leech: You showed a time card to let them know that their time was almost up. I think you mentioned earlier that this event also led to your least favorite internship chore. What was your least favorite internship chore?

Shapiro: Well, everyone helped out. This office is very communally oriented. But I was in charge, at least for a portion of the time, for ushering people in and providing my elevator fob to let the people up.

Leech: So it is hard to get into the building? You have security.

Shapiro: You need to use an elevator fob in order to get to certain floors. And you scan it when you walk into the elevator, so that if you do not have a fob, you cannot go to any floors except for the first floor. You need it at the front door and you need it to operate the elevators. So when we had a large event here on the eighth floor, we needed people to essentially use their fobs to let people up and down while they were all coming in. And we had over a hundred people at this event. So I was in charge of standing next to the elevator and telling people where they were going and swiping my fob and letting them up and then doing it again. People showed up late. But I got relieved from that duty because I was also time card girl. So I had to be at the event, which was nice, because some people had to do elevator duty throughout the entire event. Because one thing about DC is that not everyone is on time.

Leech: So how many interns are there in the office?

Shapiro: I want to say there are probably about fifteen of us. It is not a huge number. I would say we probably have about anywhere from eight to ten main lobbyists, so each of them has an intern or two. And then there are a couple of interns working for National Prison Project, which is a separate ACLU division that is based here.

Leech: You were mentioning that most of the interns are not undergraduates.

Shapiro: I would say probably eighty percent of the interns in this office are second-year law students. There is one first-year law student, but it is primarily 2Ls. When I first got here, I didn’t know that 2L meant second-year law student. But I soon found out. I am one of only two undergraduate interns for the Washington Legislative Office.

Leech: Angela, does your office mostly have undergraduate interns?

Guo: Yes. We have a couple of grad students, but mostly undergraduate interns.

Leech: What have you learned during this summer as an intern?

Guo: Oh, my gosh! I have actually learned so much from this experience. Just reading the news every single day and being constantly up to date with the news has taught me so much just about public policy. The other thing the ThinkProgress interns have definitely learned is recognizing names and faces. We write up a lot about politicians, and so this is the first time that we have really been able to put names with faces and what they actually do and who they represent, and what their opinions and policy choices are, which is really cool. It has been a crash course in public policy and in government.

The other thing that we have learned is how to write under pressure, lots and lots of pressure, and under varied timed conditions. And we have learned how to write blog-style. It is not the same as writing a research paper. It is succinct: you get to the point. And people actually want to read blog-style papers as opposed to research papers.

Leech: Did you have any news background before?

Guo: I write for The Thresher, Rice University’s student newspaper, occasionally. I also have written research papers for the Baker Institute’s public policy journal—but very little blogging. Last summer, I worked for an NPR program and did a little bit of blogging, but not even close to this. And so I have learned a lot about blogging.

I also have been able to learn a lot from the people around me at CAP. We have a ton of senior researchers, and senior fellows, and other editors there. At ThinkProgress, it is a very young office. A lot of them are thinking about running for office. A lot of them have worked on the Hill. I think the oldest person there is probably thirty-five. Maybe that is even pushing it. They are within our generation and they have helped us a lot with career advice for the future. Overall, it has been a great atmosphere.

We have also learned a lot from going to events that CAP sends us to. We were able to see President Obama speak at the White House. We were able to be in the East Room, so that was really cool.

Leech: Faith is jealous.

Shapiro: I have a lot of friends working at CAP. They were very excited about seeing Obama. They got to go bowling at the White House, too.

Guo: Yes, we also got to go bowling at the White House. But CAP’s motive in sending us someplace is not just to have fun. There is also a purpose. So when we went to go bowling, it was actually called The White House Brief and Bowl, so we got briefed on student debt issues and other education issues by the education officials at the White House. They talked to us and then they brought us bowling. For the student debt day, we had to talk to various news outlets about how we personally felt about student debt and how it was affecting us, or our friends, or our families. And we also had to go lobby on the Hill before we saw Obama. There is always a purpose and we always learn something from it.

Leech: How about you, Faith? What do feel you have learned over the course of the summer?

Shapiro: I have learned a lot, especially about how DC works. I visited here as a child, but only by working with an organization like the ACLU Washington Legislative Office did I began to realize how many different influences go into certain policies, and how strategic it is who supports what, and who you need to speak to and who it has to go through, and how having a history on the Hill is really important for lobbying.

We have brownbag lunches with a lot of our lobbyists. So they tell us how they came to work for the ACLU. A lot of them have experience working for members of Congress on Capitol Hill, and that is a big part of how they got their jobs here. That was something that I had never really even thought about, the possibility of working on the Hill. Also, I have learned so much about the issues that we advocate by being immersed in DC—actually being here and reading CQ, and The Hill, and Politico, and the e-mailed news flashes that go out to our office. Just being in the heart of it gives you a much more comprehensive view of the issues.

I especially have learned a lot connected to the Supreme Court’s recent decisions relating to immigration—which is great because I am so interested in refugee and immigrant populations, and human rights as it relates to them. It has been really incredible for me to see it all unfold and to get to go to the press conference that we had when the decision upholding the Arizona anti-immigrant law came out, and to get to talk to our lobbyists who work on that issue.

It has really been a fantastic opportunity to get really well-acquainted with the issues. I have learned what it is like to have a career, and that it is possible to have a career in the nonprofit sector in a public policy capacity. I have learned a lot about positions that I did not know existed, and companies and organizations that are in DC that I could potentially work for as an adult. So it has been very eye-opening in that way.

Leech: Where do you go from here? How about you, Faith? What will you do after your internship is over?

Shapiro: Well, ultimately I would like to pursue a career in social justice. If the ACLU would have me, I would love to work for them. This internship has been an incredible experience. This coming year, I will be president of the ACLU club at Rice, so, hopefully, I can apply what I learned here about national issues more locally.

Long term, I am interested in going to law school, as just about everyone in this office is in law school if they are not already a lawyer. But I would want to keep a strong focus on social justice issues, in particular the problems that surround refugee populations, human rights, and immigration reform. I would love to work on immigration reform in the future. I hope to get into a law program that focuses on issues like that so that I ultimately can pursue a career similar to the lobbyists in this office.

Leech: So would your plan be to go to law school right after you graduate, or do you not know yet?

Shapiro: One thing about working with a bunch of law students as interns is that the overwhelming response to that is I will hopefully take a year or two off—maybe to work, if I can get a job. I also plan to apply for different fellowships and scholarships: the Fulbright, things of that nature, maybe to do some research abroad. As a result of this summer, my plans have broadened a little bit. I would be really interested in working in DC as a legislative assistant for the ACLU, or a similar organization, or on the Hill. I think that would be a very valuable experience, and a lot of the law students advised me that it is really important that you pinpoint exactly why you want to go to law school before you do it, because it makes the first year a lot more bearable.

Leech: How about you, Angela?

Guo: All of the Baker Institute interns are required to do a research project after we return to campus, and in the first week of school, we give a presentation in front of all of the Baker Institute fellows at Rice on some issue that we have researched throughout the summer. I think my topic is going to be bias in political journalism. It will be something that I have seen a lot of, so that will be interesting. We write a paper, we give a presentation, and we defend it in front of a lot of these fellows. So that will be a little bit intimidating.

In terms of the long run, I am also really interested in going to law school. I think a lot of people in DC are. It is either that or public policy school. I have had such a good experience in DC that I think I do want to come back. Something else that I want to do is work on a campaign. Having done all of this writing this past summer on sort of campaign issues, I think it would be really cool if I took a year off, maybe in 2016, and went to Iowa and worked on a Democratic campaign. I think that would be a great experience and that might lead to a lot of open doors.

The other thing that the Baker Institute program specifically provides us is a really good broad alumni network. We are the ninth cohort of interns funded by the institute, and a lot of the alums now have pretty high-level positions. Those former interns from the Baker Institute have been really good about helping us and telling us what to do from here. And so I hope I can return to DC someday to get involved in arts lobbying or arts advocacy. In the near future, I am definitely looking to go to law school.

Leech: Very good. What advice do you have for future interns or people who want to be interns?

Shapiro: Have a good résumé. Have good interview skills. No, I am kidding. I think my advice would be to come to DC with an open mind. Every organization is different. I know I worked for a local nonprofit in Houston last summer, and this summer could not be more different. I think there is nothing like a nonprofit that functions in DC. I have worked from the grassroots perspective. I worked for a literacy organization last summer. And this summer, to see how an organization can impact public policy and affect the legislation that goes out is incredible. But if I had come here close-minded and said, “Only grassroots!” and was not open to learning new things, I think that I would have had not nearly as incredible of an experience.

It is also very important to take every opportunity you get. There are tons of intern events. You get invited to one hundred and one lunches, such as the brownbag lunches here. There are outside organizations that will have issue briefings on all kinds of things, things that the ACLU is not involved with but I will get invited to because I am part of the DC intern culture. And some of my most incredible experiences here have come out of saying, “Okay, you know what? I’m going to go this briefing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” And that is not something that the ACLU deals with, but it is something I was interested in, and I went and it was incredible. I met incredible people. I learned about an issue that I was not as well-versed on as I would like. DC has tons of opportunities, both within your organization and outside in the community.

Leech: How do you get on the intern list so that you get all of those invitations?

Shapiro:The invitations just go out. They find you. I do not even know. We will have someone from our office say that one of their friends passed this on to them and said, “Hey, let the interns in your office know.” Most of mine do come from the office, even if they are not ACLU-affiliated. It is just people saying, “Hey, you’re an intern. Either you’re interested in this topic or you need free food.” You attend these things.

I went to a happy hour for people who are interested in getting a master’s in international policy. And going in there, I was not really sure if I was interested in getting a master’s for international policy. But after leaving, I may be very interested in getting a master’s in international policy. Before, I did not know enough about it to make an informed decision. It actually relates really well to my interest in human rights and refugee populations. The university has joint master’s degree programs with their law degree programs, which I did not know either. So I think that you have to be open to learning and having new experiences while you are here, especially in a community of such driven individuals.

All of the interns I meet here are incredible. I am floored, not only by the people who I work with, but by the people that I meet. Because everyone here is just really driven, dedicated to what they are doing, and wants to make a difference.

Leech: Okay, good. And Angela?

Guo: One piece of advice that I would give is that you never know who you are going to run into, or who you are going to meet, or what you are going to see in DC. And that is really important. I think the networking opportunities here are amazing, and every intern should take advantage of them. We saw US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner walking down the street. We run into senators. One of my friends who works at Brookings ran into Bill Clinton in the hallway.

Leech: Bill Clinton.

Guo: Yes. You just never know what is going to happen. And I would say take advantage of it, and also be on your best behavior all the time, because you also never know what is going to come out of an awkward meeting with somebody who just happened to be there. So it does offer a lot of outstanding networking opportunities.

And I would agree with Faith: take advantage of every little invite that you get, every little event that you get invited to. Actually, two sources that I use a lot are Linktank and Weekbook, online sites that list events in Washington. They compile a list of all the talks, and all the lunches, and all the free events that you can go to that week. At CAP, almost every day there is some lunch or some person coming to talk. Some of the interns say, “I would rather just stay at my desk for lunch hour.” But you really shouldn’t. You should absolutely go down there.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a talk by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley with one of the girls I work with. We were able to get ten minutes alone with O’Malley, and that was insane. Because he might actually be a presidential candidate in the next four or eight years. So it is cool the amount of opportunities DC has and that they are open to all the interns. Everyone should take advantage of these kinds of opportunities. You never know what is going to happen or what’s going to come out of it.

Shapiro: You’re right, Angela. When I went to the intern event on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that I mentioned earlier, I met someone who then invited me to the intern happy hour about the master’s in public policy. And then at that happy hour, I met someone who was organizing a reception at the Indian ambassador’s house for a retiring senator. So I got to go to that reception as well, which was incredible. There were tons of members of Congress there, and I met all of these really interesting people. That is a memory I am going to have for the rest of my life. And it was an opportunity that I would have missed out on if I had ever at some point said, “I prefer to stay at my desk for this event,” or, “I would rather go home for dinner than have dinner at this intern summit.” I think that is how those things work. One opportunity leads to another.

Guo: I was thinking about two other things that were really important for the summer. One is reaching out to your alumni network. I know that for me and for a lot of Rice students here, this summer has just been made all the more of a positive experience because we have reached out to alumni. Actually, this afternoon at four thirty, we are going over to the White House because one alumnus, Josh Ernest, is the Deputy Press Secretary to President Obama. He said, “Oh, of course I want to meet with you Rice students.” And he cleared his schedule.

Leech: You called him and said, “Will you meet with us?”

Guo: I met him at a Baker Institute event a couple of months ago at Rice. And he said, “Obviously, I will be in DC over the summer. Just give me a call.” And so a couple of us are going over later today to meet with him at the White House, and he is going to walk us around and tell us how he got from Rice to this position. We have three congressmen in the House who are alums from Rice, and they have been more than happy to just go around talking to Rice interns, which I think is fantastic. So that is another little piece of advice: definitely reach out to your alumni network.

And the last thing I can think of is picking random roommates was honestly the best decision I made. I am living with one other Rice student, but I am in a suite with three people who I adore after spending the summer with them. And we all work in different places. I am very liberal, but one of my roommates is working for the Republican National Committee and she is in their legal office. It is amazing just to talk with her and see what she thinks and what I think, and talk about it. We do not argue, but politics are just broadened once you are able to listen to the other side.

And the other advantage to having roommates who are all interns is that we get to go to a ton of different events. If my roommates hear about something at their office, they can invite me to come with them. I was able to go to a couple of talks at the Council on Foreign Relations because one of my roommates works there. Get out of your comfort zone and live with people that you do not know.

Leech: Did you two manage to get to all of your talking points by the end of this interview? Faith, did your boss, Laura Murphy, give you advice about the best way to interview?

Shapiro: No.

Leech: She knew I was easy, right?

Shapiro: I think she very much respects my personal autonomy. I think that is one thing that is really fantastic about working for her. So she trusts me, I think, to do the interview. And she gets to see a transcript.

Leech: Good point.