I’m going to start this reflection with a confession: I truly did not know or understand what exactly my internship would entail. While there was a description on the Truman Project/Center for National Policy’s website about what my specific intern duties would be, I was unfamiliar with “Leadership Development”- the department that I would be interning with. Moreover, I had difficulty explaining to friends and family what specifically I would be doing as a “Leadership Development” intern at a national security focused think tank. I knew that “Development” referred to fundraising for any given organization, but where exactly did the “Leadership” portion of the title come in? As much as I tried to research my questions on their website, it wasn’t until the first day of my internship that I finally began to grasp what my summer interning with Truman would look like.

The Class of 2014 Truman Project interns at a special VIP tour of the Pentagon.

One of the skills I first learned as an LD intern was how to manage and work Truman’s huge database called “Salsa.” Salsa was vital to our organization because inside the database was every important piece of information that we needed to know about our members. For example, each one of our members has a profile within Salsa that records in-depth information about their jobs, biographies, membership dues, the number of Truman events they attend, veteran status, rank in the military, and even more. Throughout the summer, I learned how to update member information within Salsa and how to work with some of the more specific packages: the email and events package.

Me standing behind the podium in the Pentagon’s Briefing Room.

One of my biggest responsibilities was to send emails to our entire community. Every Monday, I sent out an email titled the “Week Ahead,” which listed all of our upcoming events in addition to breaking news that happened over the weekend. Throughout the week I would work on this email by designing pictures that would accompany the event listed and formatting the email. This was where the most difficult part of the process came in: I needed to know the basics of html/coding in order to change the format. While I was briefly taught some of the basics of coding by my intern supervisor, it took a tremendous amount of practice for me to finally be able to read html, and then alter the code to fit what I needed it to do. And although I knew it would be okay for me to ask questions about the coding, I also understood that my co-workers had many other important things to work on. Therefore, I essentially taught myself how to code this summer. Every Monday I used to be so nervous about sending out the email to 1,000 plus members in fear that the format would somehow be messed up, but by the end of summer I was so excited to come into work every Monday; it was the day where I was able to put my skills to the test and to let my team know that I could handle this large responsibility. In addition to sending out this weekly email, I also learned how to create event pages in Salsa and have them posted on our website. Through this, I learned how to work with WordPress, and more specifically what visually appealed to people.

While I did learn many very “practical” and “tangible” skills such as working with a database and becoming very confident in my Excel skills, another very important aspect of my internship was learning how to communicate with our members. Not only would members directly email me with questions about events, but I also had the opportunity to meet of them individually for informational interviews. Although it may seem scary at first, I advise the next LD intern to reach out to members they are potentially interested in meeting with. They are such a great resource, and I am so happy that I had the chance to connect with many successful and young individuals who have landed great jobs in D.C. Moving forward, I am much more confident in my ability to network and learning how to relate to people who are doing the work I envision myself doing.

Editor’s Note: This guest blogger was a 2014 Scripps College Internship Grant recipient. To learn more about the 2015 Internship Grant process, click here.  Deadline Feb. 5.