An incomplete list of non-work things I did as an intern in Congress

By Sheeva Azma

As science policy professionals, we are more than the impressive job titles and institutions on our resumes.

As I have previously written, Congressional staffers and interns work really hard. There’s a lot to do and it keeps changing every day.

Especially given our elected lawmakers’ need to opine and establish policy based on the 24/7 breaking news ecosystem — as leaders tend to do — it can really be a lot.

The news headlines rarely affected my science career, back when I was a scientist. In the lab, whether I was an intern or a graduate student, I could almost always count on being able to just sit at my computer and program quietly at my desk … or stand at the hood, pipetting … or scan a person in the MRI, giving them my undivided attention as I studied their attentional mechanisms … or do whatever I was doing that day … for several hours, working independently.

That’s not how working in Congress is at all. In addition to performing Congress’s daily tasks for constituents, there is another layer of reacting to the nation and world’s happenings. All of this work is done with a team of people at various levels, with various types of expertise that can be vastly different from yours, especially if you have a science background. That’s what makes working in Congress so fast-paced. It can be a culture shock for scientists.

If you’re wondering what my day-to-day was as an intern in the House of Representatives, read this for all the deets. If you’d like a larger-scale recap of the whole experience, read this blog.

In this article, I would like to acknowledge the need for people interning in Congress, especially those with a science background who aren’t used to this pace of work, to break out of “work” mode and stop and smell the roses (so to speak) a bit, even if for a short period of time.

Here is a list of things I did in Congress that helped keep me going every day. These were not things that would ever go on my resume, nor are any of them particularly glamorous, but they are just as much a part of my life as the prestigious entry on my resume that says I worked there. Writing this out feels very messy and unglamorous, but that’s what life is sometimes. If anything, I want people reading this blog to know that working in Congress may seem glamorous, but it is not — it is difficult work that must be done for the sake of everyone in the US and globally.

Another reason I am writing this blog is that, as high-achieving people in the science policy community, we are more than the impressive job titles and institutions on our resumes. This could not be more important in the time in which I am writing this, where many science policy professionals have been, whether temporarily or permanently, laid off from the federal government. We are more than what our resume says we are, and we have a whole life that is not captured by that piece of paper. That’s why job interviews exist, after all (though I probably would not mention these things in a job interview, either).

There’s also an additional layer for women working in Congress. There’s a very masculine power dynamic, or at least there was when I worked there in 2017. One of my most bizarre memories of working in Congress is looking at a poster which had “women’s issues” on the legislative issue list crossed out. I guess because that’s apparently hilarious? To me, it was just another example of casual (and now, post-DOGE‘s emphasis on where government money goes, I can add, taxpayer-funded) sexism in the workplace that I could ignore.

There are very little social supports built into working in Congress, I learned, which is kind of sad, but one could say the same thing about science. That’s why I had to get creative and come up with ways to stay sane so that I could do my job every day, working in the House of Representatives.

Even seven years later, writing this, I do not have the proper words to explain what it was like working somewhere that important and hectic — but it was fun and the opportunity of a lifetime! Writing these blogs, I hope to put these thoughts into words to help scientists realize that working in Congress is an opportunity that they have, too, even if job descriptions in the legislative branch — whether local, state, or federal — sometimes value skills that scientists are not readily taught. (You can learn some of them here for free!)

Anyway, on to the list of things I did that helped keep me reasonably sane interning in Congress:

• Drinking five cups of coffee a day. Okay, this was not balanced or probably even healthy at all, but I try not to judge myself for it, since it helped me get a lot done. And, let’s face it, there was a lot that needed to be done, so I probably could not have done my job without it, though I wish I could have managed my sleep better as an intern. Three of the cups of my daily coffee were from our office coffeemaker and therefore paid for by the taxpayers of the district, and so I am forever indebted to them for subsidizing my coffee habit so I could have the energy to serve them. Shoutout to our staff assistant who always made a special trip to the grocery store so we could also have the best creamer. I am a DIY coffee girlie through and through, though I was also, as part of my job, tasked with picking up my coworkers’ coffees at Dunkin Donuts — hey, teamwork makes the dream work!
• Staying attuned to the local happenings of where I am from. I am from Oklahoma, and when I was interning in Congress, Kevin Durant, who was a starting member of the Oklahoma City Thunder, made the decision to leave the team. As a result, there was this whole beef with Kevin Durant, who his former fans now were angry with and called “Cupcake,” that involved people dressing up as cupcakes outside of the Chesapeake Energy Arena, which was where the Thunder used to play back then. I followed the news from DC and it gave me a cupcake craving, so I went to the grocery store and bought some cupcakes. I brought one with me to work one morning — it journeyed with me all the way from my hotel, to the Metro, through security, and finally to my office where I could enjoy it with coffee. It was totally extra but when you are working in DC, far from your local community, these small acts make life so much better.
• Taking breaks, even when it seemed like nobody else was. I don’t know why, but it seemed like my coworkers, who were often a decade (or more) younger than me, mostly government and political science majors headed for a career in law, economics, or politics, and could seemingly could work nonstop without any breaks. I often got frustrated, writing science-informed memos and proofreading science and technical content in a loud, busy office. So, I stepped out for quick breaks, whether to get a snack, go for a walk, or just cry in the Longworth bathroom. This was totally unglamorous (it was not uncommon for me to walk out of the office about to cry) but much-needed, and luckily, my boss didn’t think too much of it.
• Expressing myself through fashion. This was one thing about Capitol Hill that I embraced that was not part of my life in science. In science, you might get a weird comment about an outfit you wore to lab (as I sometimes did — and my outfits were not weird, just a standard deviation of style above the rest, sometimes, if you ask me), but in politics, the more stylish and detail-oriented you are, the more you fit in with every other woman showing up to work that day. Statement necklaces and cute but professional-looking suits were the norm, not the exception — and I loved that about working in Congress.
• Going for walks. Capitol Hill is actually really scenic, and within a few short blocks, you have the House buildings, Senate buildings, Library of Congress, the Capitol Building, and the Supreme Court! There are also a few coffeeshops and food places around and it’s so much less chaotic outside of those buildings than it is in them. The energy in our federal lawmaking buildings is very different from any other work establishment I’ve been in and the energy outside is just … a great break from what can feel way too important and intense sometimes.
• Paying attention to my feelings. I have seen a few people on social media — mostly young women in their 20s — joke that DC is a great place to cry, and I can confirm that Capitol Hill is one of those places. I didn’t see too many people crying there, but between the stresses of the workplace and life … lifeing, I certainly had my fair share of crying breakdowns. It’s okay to be in touch with your emotions, but as I learned, it can be unnerving to your fellow staffers if you are sobbing hysterically in a Longworth bathroom. So, yeah…
• Exploring DC. I had already lived in DC before I interned in Congress, so it was easy for me to find my happy places. I love to shop in DC — I already knew that Union Station is a great place to go shopping, as is Pentagon City, and if you take the subway, you get the added benefit of a fun Metrorail ride where you can see a subset of the city that are not attuned to every detail of what is happening in Congress, which is nice.
• Unplugging from social media. Oh, boy, little did I know that when you work in Congress at the beginning of a new presidential administration, people you know would complain about that administration every single day of your new job. Congress is a whole separate branch of government, which people fail to realize sometimes, but I could not get away from the political posts about the executive branch, so I just stopped reading Facebook. It was just too much to be fielding constituent calls and then coming home to the same thing on my social media. It did not provide me with good, civic engagement energy I needed as a Congressional intern, though I never criticized my social media friends for exercising their first amendment rights, of course. I just opted out of Facebook for a while. (I still avoid reading those posts, by the way — but now, it’s because I wonder: what’s the point of complaining and then never doing anything?)
• Keeping a healthy dose of perspective. It was worth it for me to give up two months of my life to work for free and go into debt, but I did not go into my internship thinking that I would have time for anything but work. I was a freelance writer by then, and I put all my writing projects on hold.
• Doing the things that make me happy and balanced. For me, that’s watching weekend news shows (wow, am I a policy wonk, which I realized working in Congress and being surrounded by people exactly like me that I did not even know existed before) and sipping a cup of coffee, or going on a walk somewhere new. I loved working in DC and made time for the things that made me feel happy, however small.

So…there you have it. Working in Congress is not glamorous, but it sure is important to have people doing that work. What would you add to your list of things that keep you sane working in (or studying) science policy? Comment below!