Applying to Washington internships

Many Washington internships have really late application deadlines, and even later interviews, and even later notification dates.

On one hand, this is good: when it became clear that the opportunities I’d lined up weren’t going pan out, I was able to double back and land a totally sweet position at the HRC. I’m kind of astonished to note that there are still beaucoup internships for this fall appearing on Idealist on a daily basis. (It’s not too late for you to join us!)

On the other hand, this is bad: I’d been in touch with OSL about my plans, but I ended up calling poor Alison Black literally the day before the dorms opened to give her my final decision that I wasn’t coming back.

Advice: Take the plunge, tell Olin you’re leaving, and worry about the particulars later. Damn the torpedoes! Worry not, though: OSL has been really patient and flexible and a joy to work with. If something comes up, they’ve got your back.

Important caveat: If you’re not going to be a full-time student, make sure your health insurance will still cover you. It turns out that my plan lets students take a single semester off, so I’m OK for what I wanted to do. You might not be so lucky; call and find out before it becomes a crisis.

Also, briefly — in terms of actually nabbing jobs, the DC internship circuit is a little different from the engineering circuit. Chances are:

• nobody’s ever heard of Olin
• they don’t care (much) about your engineering work, and
• you’re competing against people who are actually majoring in relevant fields.

So you really need to position yourself in a way that makes you seem worth contacting. I restructured my resume pretty drastically, placing my campus leadership activities up front and only then following with my employment experience. I also included my political volunteer work in my work experience (nobody said you have to get paid for it to count). In my cover letter, I tried to explain how my engineering experiences, particularly at Olin, had given me a lot of skills that made me really useful in other fields (it’s true!). I had a really helpful phone conversation with Leslie Larocca, formerly head of Postgraduate Planning, who helped me figure a lot of this out. I don’t know if anyone else even wants to do a Washington internship but I’d be happy to show you a copy of my application materials if you think it’d help you.

Anyway. I hope that was interesting to someone. Good luck to y’all back at Olin; hope the semester’s treating you well so far. I start Monday! I’m kind of super-excited.