A Bit of a Runaround

PROOF POSITIVE that things here have a certain fluidity to them was established today, when I walked into the Washington Center today for the second day of orientation (more on the first later) at 1pm, and left at 3pm with a completely different internship.

How did I become such a renegade, you ask? Well, in order to come to DC, I had to get a J-1 visa (which is a new visa specifically designed for internship and training program participants coming into the US from Canada). In order to get a J-1 visa (in addition to filling out a pile of last-minute paperwork that kept me up most of Monday night, and spending an extra twenty-ish minutes biting my nails at customs) I had to have an official internship placement (and my supervisor had to sign my forms). So, I accepted the offer of the only organization that had gotten back to me by last Friday, International Action. And I was pretty happy about it, although I had applied and/or interviewed for a couple of other internships that were more substantial, more immediately related to my field of interest (international human rights law and policy) and with larger organizations that offered opportunities for more inter-organizational collaboration.

One of these was a placement with Women Thrive Worldwide (formerly the Women's Edge Coalition), which is a nonprofit representing a coalition of more than 50 different organizations that focus on the (mostly economic) rights of women internationally. In the words of their website (found at http://www.womensedge.org/), Women Thrive "develops, shapes, and advocates for policies that foster economic opportunity for women living in poverty. [They] focus on making U.S. international assistance and trade programs prioritize women," with the belief that the economic empowerment of women is the most direct route to combating world poverty.

The internship position that Women Thrive was offering sounded valuable, substantive, and exciting (more details when I actually begin work!), but I didn't get a callback before I had to respond to TWC with my confirmed placement, so I accepted another (one that was not as ideal, but still great) and figured that was that.

That was, that is, until things calmed down on Wednesday, and I finally got a chance to check my email inbox. Sometime while I was on the plane that morning, my interviewer at Women Thrive had emailed me: they wanted to offer me the internship! The problem was, I already had one. Very slight madness ensued.

I spent most of Thursday (and Friday) intermittently consulting with my advisor and calling my contact at Women Thrive. The upshot: by the end of today, it was established that my visa could be transferred, TWC would send other people over to International Action to interview for internship positions, and that, for all intensive purposes, I could officially accept Women Thrive's offer (which I did).

So, all's well that ends well. :) I think this new internship will be an amazing experience, and I'm very happy about seizing the opportunity to take it. It's been pretty slow going getting the information coordination going between TWC and Women Thrive (which will henceforth be known as WTW), but for all intensive purposes, I know where I'm working for the next two months, and I'm pumped!

Obviously, I've moved in to a new apartment, explored a new city (so cool-like NYC only scaled down both in terms of size, and dirtiness), and met new roommates. All of this equals many, many more paragraphs. But I think this entry's long enough - so I'll keep y'all* in suspense about everything else until later this weekend.

* See? I'm picking up the local dialect already! And yes, I'm in DC-but that particular expression seems to creep in to the language of a surprisingly large number of people here.

;-)