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19 September 2002 It was one crazy summer. I took my last final on a Friday afternoon, and had to be in D.C. by Monday morning at 8 a.m. Which meant that as soon as my test was over, I had to immediately pack up my car and hit the road back to my mother's house. (Much to the chagrin of Pony and Bridge who had to clean 1C. Rumor has it that it was a tough job. They took photos to prove it.) The next day my dad drove me to our nation's capital, and we got into town late that night. We spent all day Sunday doing the normal DC tourist things like going to the Smithsonian and touring the Capitol. (We got lost, which is hilarious considering that not even a week later I was giving tours to 13-year-olds.) He helped me get settled into my dorm room at American University and rode the Metro to the Hill with me that first Monday morning. He walked me to the door of the Russell Senate Office Building, and hugged me good-bye. It was one of the few times in my life that I could feel how proud he was of me. I was proud of myself, but I was mostly just scared to death. I walked through the metal detector and up the elevator to the Senator's corridor. I peeked my head into one of the offices and saw three other scared-looking college kids and knew I'd found the right place. The office was in the process of moving, just a few doors down, but I still spent my entire first day moving files. I wondered why I'd even bothered wearing a new suit. My internship on Capitol Hill was barely two months long, but that time was packed with more new experiences and memories than any other event in my life before or since. I spent my work days either sight-seeing or being hit on by Sen. Strom Thurman. There were bagels with the Senator I was interning for (an event her junior staffers didn't stop whining about) and lunches by the fountain with her receptionist - a sweet 22-year-old named Mark who'd just graduated from UT and took a liking to me and my best intern friend, Vicky. I went jogging through Tenleytown and got drunk in Chinatown with a bunch of kids from Villanova. I went to see Chicago at The National Theatre and took a train to Baltimore. I met my then-boyfriend's parents while he was off in Washington State climbing mountains. I played softball on the mall with Congressmen from Ohio and met a fellow Miami student in the halls of a House Office Building. (We would remain friends into the Columbus years until the unfortunate night he kissed me and it weirded our friendship out for good.) I went to the beach with my boyfriend and we camped out on an island inhabited by wild horses. He dropped me off in front of the same American U dorm that my dad had left me in front of just six weeks earlier and we said good-bye for the last time as a couple. In the next few weeks I would cheat on him and break his heart. I got back to Ohio a few days before my 21st birthday and had just enough time to squeeze in a family party and a wedding before driving down to Oxford. The next six weeks or so were spent in drunken blur with a few trips to my statistics class. I was taking it pass/fail so I knew I just had to squeak by with a C- or so. Still, I started to panic towards the end of the session and made Levi, the pre-med major, tutor me. Luckily, I'm a quick study and he's a patient teacher, which meant that we had more time to hang out at Stadium and play trivia and drink beer. Which we did. A lot. I've said it before - it was the best and worst summer of my life. It was also, you guessed it, the craziest.
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