By YAN YuWen

It’s been a while since the last time I looked through all those pictures taken in DC, getting all the memories flooding back to me strongly. This four-month experience has been truly one of the best experiences I could ever imagine having: the crystal clear sky greeting me every morning, the tidy streets with block-like colorful buildings; the breeze on the starry night when we took a long walk on the national mall; the sunset in which we took tons of pictures at Georgetown, as well as the loving American roommates who helped me blend into American culture. The coworkers then takes me as one of their families, and those Asians friends, with the company of whom I never felt lonely for even a moment – I wouldn’t even believe you if you told me this was I was about to experience before I actually experience it myself, because these beautiful moments are just too incredible to be true. Not being exaggerating at all, for a lot of moments while I was there, I felt it all like a dream, an autumn dream that I would choose never to wake up from.

Because of the chance our International School offered me, I was able to be selected as one of the 18 members in the 2015 Ford Global Scholar Program in the Washington Center and start a whole different journey than what I would ever have expected.

I get to have the chance of interning in a government department -- DC Department of General Services as a marketing and communication intern. There have been some confusing moments for me for the fact that the work given to me was not what I came all the way across the ocean for. However, looking back, despite all those confusing moments I’ve experienced, I was surprised to realize what a great self-exploring opportunity this internship has been as well as surprised about how many new things I’ve done that I’ve always wanted to do but never get to do. From holding camera with my hands shaking complaining about its being way too heavy to taking countless good pictures with camera professionally, from taking hours to write 5 tweets with grammar mistakes to doing real time tweets during the process of big events, from stepping back when talking to people in the office to conducting interviews with people I’ve never talked to before, from using phone to edit picture to making nice homepage picture using Photoshop — all these small yet great transformations took place in a way that I wouldn’t ever possible expect, but that makes your life exciting and different is what is unexpected.  And all those transformations would never possibly take place without my dear supervisor James and director Kenny who care about me as a individual who need professional growth, not just a random intern who wouldn’t do much contribution to their actual work.

(Picture during work with Mayor Browser – the mayor of Washington DC)

During the whole internship, I learnt about how a government agency runs, experienced the hearing in the council and realized what it takes to tackle even a simple local issue, realizing the great difficulties faced with doing community outreach. Most importantly, I have had real hand-on experience of doing social media marketing, which gave me a whole new perspective towards social media that I’ve been using every day. It’s all different from what I originally expected but this wouldn't change the fact that I’ve learned so much from it.

About the city DC, there is one thing that I found to be particularly impressive as well as helpful to me — networking. I don’t know if it’s a nationwide thing or it’s more typical in DC, that people are more than willing to help you in any way they can and help you reach out to more people regardless of your social status. I would never imagine that chatting with someone in my office for the first time would lead me to a meeting of a newly established US-China investment center. Neither would I imagine having lunch with a successful banker who has been in the financial industry for more than 30 decades face to face just because of a random chat during gala. All of connections with these professionals who seem to be far away from your life happen so naturally, within several emails or even maybe some small talks in the office. The power of networking here really surprised me, while I’m from a country where the strong social hierarchy constrains the networking greatly, which makes it hard for an intern to reach out to people from higher position of any company/organization. It has been so helpful to me because by making use of the network, I get to hear the real stories of working in certain industries from experienced people and received so much valuable career suggestions from them.

An experience only becomes emtionally bonded because of the people you met, who makes your meomories go beyond meomories. I guess it’s because I’m too lucky that almost everyone I met in US has treated me extremely nicely.  I would never forget how much fun I have had with my asian friends, cooking, travelling and shopping together. With same skin color and similar cultural background, they are like family and that’s why I try hard not to lose contact with all of them because I just wouldn't trade the friendship with them for anything. My American experience wouldn’t have been so comlete if I didn’t meet my three American roommates who took me to the baseball game, introduce me to all the other American friends of them, and invite me to their families to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas. And all the other people – my dearest coworkers solving all my burdens at work, my Ford fellows,  the lovely cashier at the Subway who talked to me everytime I bought sandwiches, the gentlemen by the metro station who waved good morning to passerbys every morning. My American family who were kind enough to accommadate me for weeks – They are the reason that makes me miss this nation of wamth until now and the reason that I’ve got to go back one day.

(My birthday dinner with friends all over the world)

My experience in TWC overall makes me realize how important leadership is for personal development;  how citizen’s effort can make differences to the society as a whole;  how one should take initiative to network for professional development, and how many possibilities one could have in your future career that you might even not imagine before. My goal of exploring my professional interested is in a way fulfilled by seeking out more professional options and my goal of exploring myself is achieved — seeing a more motivated, aggressive and adaptive girl in me.  With all the wonderful friends made and all valuable lessons learnt here, ‘DC’ would from now on not only be a name of this nation’s capital, but more importantly mark a life time experience with amazing memory.

I wish I would never wake up from this dream but yet I have to and I have had. But I would move on, carrying on the memories, towards a dream-like life in the futures.

Additional Picture if needed: (1-My US family, 2- Our JUFE TWCers)