A Day in the Life of an Intern

So after being in DC for two months, I think the time has come for the coveted blog post on what a typical day for me is. One note though, the nature of my internship makes my tasks and duties vary significantly from day to day, so the following schedule is a compilation of a few different days.

6:15 am- Alarm clock. Yes, it's ridiculously early.

7:15 am- my morning commute begins. Instead of having a a 5 minute walk to class, I have a half hour commute- on a good day. My commute though is fairly simple compared to others that I work with. It's about a 10 minute walk to the metro, a 10 minute metro ride (on only one rail line) and then another 10 minute walk. By the time I get to work, the sun is just coming up, which means that I get to see the sunrise every morning. So nice.

8 am- morning meeting with a few of the members of the Ed department. This is very informal, and just involves stopping by someone's cubicle to see what they have going on for the day. Some days I get specific tasks, and other days they have already emailed me what they need for the day.

8:15-10:00 am- This is my research time. Every day I seem to be working on something different, and past examples include creating and then typing lesson plans, working on index and introduction pages for the newest MASSIVE exhibit, Discovering the Civil War, and just doing research for upcoming video conferences. Every once in awhile I have a meeting, but normally not this early in the morning.

10:00 am- Resource Room time. I spend time in the Resource helping the public learn more about what the Archives has, and how they can access it. People normally either shy away from it, or dive right in. The ones who do jump right in (especially kids) are the best ones to come in!

12:30- Grab lunch quick! Now that it's getting nice out, eating outside is a nice break and a chance to get outside.

1:00 pm- Normally I have taken the afternoon labs, if there are any. These normally take about 2 hours to go through the workshop and then a short tour of the Archives. Sometimes in the afternoon though, I will have a Trolley Tour, which is an hour long tour of the Archives for junior high students.

3;30 pm- By the time the lab is finished and cleaned up, I head back down to my desk to finish up my research for the day, or to work on tasks that I did not finish from the morning. If I put in a pull slip for research earlier in the day, I go up to the reading room to pull records and do research.

4:30 pm- Done for the day. Just another half hour commute back to Rosslyn and then it's dinner and homework time for the rest of the night.

Like I said earlier, my day really varies on if there are tours, meetings, labs, or special events going on that day. Hopefully for those of you who wanted to know more details about what I do are satisfied with this breakdown. Basically, it's one third in the public area giving tours and labs, one thrid doing research, and one third in the Resource room.