20 hour Internship
Journal Enteries
​
​
​
(Every Week I come into the office three times, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I come in every day for 4 hours; around 12 hours a week. I would come into the office or help otu at events irregularly on the weekends)
​
November: 50 hours
December: 57 hours
January: 48 hours
Febuary: 61 hours
March: 39 hours
April: 49 hours
May: 50 hours
June: 30 hours
​
​
​
ACLC Internship Closing Report
I have had this internship since November and ended Last month. I worked in Rob Bonta’s district office. He is the state assembly member for our district which includes Oakland, Emeryville, and San Leandro. This has not been my first internship involving local politics but it was definitely one of my favorites. I learned so many valuable lessons and gained so many skills that I can use specifically in politics as trying to help my representatives but also as a community member.
As my internships are the interns are the lowest ranked position in the office. While I was always the one filing and going down the elevator of 22 levels to run errands as well as making coffee I never felt once in the office that my voice didn't matter. I also was the one in charge of the email which is the public inbox which if not checked daily can reach up to 6,000 per week. Every time I would go to my internship I would work on clearing that and adding the data into LCMS- database we use to organize bills and constituents and then clear the data for the staff members. Many times as I would read the email I would take the case upon myself and start working on the problem as their own representative. As time went on I started to develop more advanced tasks such as organizing bills and communicating it to hundreds of our constituents. This took many weeks and hours due to the fact that everything is done on the computer but can be pretty hard to find. This was my final and favorite task given to me at the internship because I was able to work with the constituents and it was a real learning experience. One I had to learn everything by myself meaning I had to get info on how to use many database as well as enhance my research skills. Second I started to learn about multiple bills that were chartered and finalize and how to organize them which gives me a hand on experience with public policy.
I learned how to work in a work environment with people from all around the world and with people who were far from like each other and trying to make a certain task complete. I also learned basic fundamental knowledge of bills and constituents laws to be able to use it I ever am found again in a political office. I was also able to learn reliability the job forced me to be on time and keeping up a regular weekly schedule which created nothing but attendance for me each week. I learned so much from this internship that I could never write a complete list of what I have accomplished from having this internship.
Some of the specific skills I had to use was one my knowledge of the outside world as someone who was brand new to policies to support a certain type of person when making decisions. Another skill I used was my charisma that I used with constituents that had a problem to to make t the confrontation much smoother. I also used organization as a big specified skill because I needed it in order to keep everything I was working on. Lastly I used my brain- I learned so much valuable lesson that I was also computing new information that had to be memorize.
I experienced many challenges throughout the internship but I would say that the toughest ones that I had to encounter was my day to day challenges with constituents coming and needing a problem to be fixed. I would have to fix these problems with a solutions within a few minutes so that our office wouldn't be badly represented and this constituent wouldn't leave our office feeling we tried everything we could to help them.
I expected at the beginning of the internship what it became which was still very basic tasks but also being able to view and witness all different levels of politics play into one man and one office of local government.
In the end this has a been a great experience and I have learned so much that I can apply in any type of office I see myself next in.
