DC — S1E1 — A DC Summer
Season 1 · Episode 1
Good morning, lovely people. This is Blaise of the 2026 ASU Capital Scholars program. This is the first of seven blog posts that each one of us thirteen will be posting over this summer. Ordinarily, we of the cohort will respond to one prompt, but this week we have three!
The week we arrived was also the week of Memorial Day. Our program had the exciting addition of being able to visit Arlington for the National Memorial Day Observance. As someone who has never been to DC, this truly felt like being launched right into the authentic experience. There were hours of music, parades, and speakers. Seeing a president and vice president for the first time was exciting, of course. However, my favorite speaker was a Medal of Honor recipient (Patrick Henry Brady) who told stories of his childhood and his time in Vietnam as a combat medic. He rescued fifty-one men singlehandedly via three helicopters. He did this in 1968, yet only received his Medal of Honor recently, as the grandson of a man he saved was born. A few months ago, he received a call and was told that all of those people who he saved had gone on to live fifty-one lives. They had gone on to start or continue fifty-one family trees. The descendants of all of those people had come together to remember what he had done. He was humble and emotional, and it was something that has stuck with me even two weeks later.
After the week of orientation and adventure, the internships began! My internship was a whirlwind of so many components. We write briefs, give presentations, help run events, attend seminars, run simulated combat scenarios, and take professional development classes. The classes were unexpected. My supervisor said something that stood out on the topic. She said, “Every DC internship expects you to be dressed properly, use the right words, and have good headshots—all of these things—but we want to help you through it all.” They truly intend to help us all succeed, both in the internship and after. The very first day, they spent half an hour giving advice on shaking hands. Little things like that surprise me. Today they are sending us off to attend a lecture on writing in high-pressure scenarios. I think the biggest thing I learned this week, however, does not come directly from my internship. The biggest lesson was that internships themselves can take many forms. Each one of the students in this program has had and will continue to have a wildly different experience. Consider the number of interns, the responsibilities, the locations, and the line of work. We may all be in DC, but there are a thousand and one different internships, and not one of them is the same. That may not have been what the prompt asked for, but I think it relates to my career goals nonetheless. It is always important to keep in mind that just as my friend might have a unique experience from me this summer, so too could my experience next summer be entirely different in its own way.
Finally, we have our own variety of homework this summer (we do get six credits after all). We have been assigned the self-development book How to Change by Katy Milkman. You can tell I've read at least some of it, due to the picture.
It is a topical book at this time in our lives. It suggests that the easiest time in life to change yourself is when everything around you is changing. For many of us, this summer is one of the most significant changes of environment in our lives. The mechanism she proposes is psychological distancing: a fresh start helps people mentally separate from their past “failed” selves and feel like a new person who can succeed this time. I often take the opposite approach and believe quite the opposite helps in my personal life. Despite this, self-improvement is always worth a shot, and I hope to use the experience to redouble on some of the habits I am trying to build. Among them, most pertinently, is the habit of writing! This assignment, of writing a blog post every week, is already a big motivation to keep writing. I also have to write for my internship. Beyond that, however, I hope to take the change of this summer as an impetus to write more for myself and use the new schedule and new responsibilities as an excuse to build new routines.
That is all I have for this week! If anyone reading has any questions, feel free to ask away. Otherwise, I will be back in a meager seven days with more stories from our time in DC.
See you next time, Blaise