DC — S2E8 — Reflections and Defeat
Season 2 · Episode 8
Good morning, lovely people.
This is the eighth and final post from the 2026 Capital Scholars cohort. It’s also the hardest to write. Reflecting on a good experience years later brings nostalgia; reflecting on one this soon brings a little sadness too.
This week’s prompt starts with a story from Dr. Woodall.
I met with a friend who works for the Department of State and is about to make her 4th or 5th move (they move every 2-3 years). This time, she and her family are moving to Brussels. We spoke about grad school and how she left graduate school to take the Foreign Service exam and she failed it. She took it again. Failed. On her third attempt she passed and the life goal she dreamed about began. She never wavered from her goal of becoming a FSO, even though on paper she failed twice. Most people would have walked away. She didn't. Friends and family (unintentionally) tried to convince her to give up her dream. She didn't listen to them.
What surprised me is that I’d heard almost this exact story from someone else just weeks earlier. Either the world is very small, or failure is simply part of the job for FSOs. I suspect it’s the latter.
We all fail constantly, in small ways and large. The skill worth building is not letting those failures rewrite the goals you’re holding onto. I won’t claim I’ve mastered turning failure into fuel (that’s harder still) but I do think I’ve made peace with letting it wash over me. I learned to surf where I was a child, and was taught a move called the turtle roll. Most waves you take head-on: you climb them, crest them, come out the other side. But some are too big. For those, you flip under your board, hold on, and let the wave pass over you. You accept that this one wins, and you put your energy into what you do next.We all fail constantly, in small ways and large. The skill worth building is not letting those failures rewrite the goals you’re holding onto. I won’t claim I’ve mastered turning failure into fuel (that’s harder still) but I do think I’ve made peace with letting it wash over me. I learned to surf where I was a child, and was taught a move called the turtle roll. Most waves you take head-on: you climb them, crest them, come out the other side. But some are too big. For those, you flip under your board, hold on, and let the wave pass over you. You accept that this one wins, and you put your energy into what you do next.
That’s the heart of the advice I’d give the next cohort: learn to tell the difference. Pick an internship that stretches you, and take on the assignments that scare you a little. That is where you’ll grow. But some walls aren’t worth running at. Part of the skill is recognizing the wave you can’t summit, ducking under it, and saving your energy for the ones you can. Don’t mistake stubbornness for grit. Have grit, perseverance, tenacity, but know how to tell the difference. Chasing something truly impossible isn’t perseverance; it’s just a way to drown. Know when to charge the wave, and know when to turtle roll.
My own “do over” this summer was a paper I committed to publishing and haven’t gotten out the door yet. It turned out to be so tailored to our group’s research project that broadening it into a real national-security argument means substantial rewriting. It isn’t a permanent failure; I’ll keep at it over the coming weeks, but it taught me to keep the wider audience in mind from the first draft, not the last.
The biggest lesson of this program is that an internship can take many shapes. I almost didn’t count this experience as one, because my definition was too narrow. The dictionary just calls it a position where you work to gain experience. By that measure — and by every measure that matters — this was an internship in the fullest sense.
So what’s next? I’m back in the great state of Washington for the rest of the summer, finishing the final class of my bachelor’s before starting a master’s in Statecraft and International Relations, with a concentration in Conflict Prevention and Resolution. I’ve got an apartment in a nice neighborhood in northern DC and I’m still hunting for a full-time role this fall. Beyond that, we’ll see.
One season ends, another begins. I loved writing for you all every Monday. If you’d like to keep reading these dispatches, you’ll find some version of them at blaise.going-rogue.com.
See you there,
— Blaise