Law school is no longer a distant eventuality, but a concrete and enthralling step in my future.  Before this internship I had my 10-year plan: graduate Scripps College with a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies, secure and complete a foreign Fellowship like the Fulbright or Watson, work at a meditation center in upstate New York for a year, and then go to law school.  After my internship, I still have the exact same plan, but where it was diaphanous before it’s become real.  I am excited for law school!

Photo of myself and other Legal Interns in front of the Duval Country Courthouse.

As interns, we were pampered with government badges and weekly field trips to different sectors important to prosecutors, both public and private.  The best perk was where government badges could take us – inside private rooms to observe and aid prosecutors as they decided which jurors to strike or advocate for in upcoming trials, inside a judge’s chambers in first appearance court, to exclusive Barr events, and, most exciting of all, inside court rooms.  While getting access inside a courtroom isn’t an elitist or hard-achieved feat what I saw inside the courtroom changed my life.  I loved it.  I was completely enthralled.  And now I am completely enthralled in the prospect of law school and even the typically arduous process of preparing for law school.  Whereas before studying was a necessary drudgery, I now have the vision of law school burning bright before me as a beacon to inspire me to study harder, strive for excellence, and push me through those windowless late night library sessions.

Three weeks into the internship, and the day after showing initiative on an intern-wide project, my boss called me into her office for a closed-door chat.  After asking about my plans for the future, she inquired if I wanted to work as a prosecutor, and more specifically, if I wanted to work as a prosecutor in Jacksonville.  After a 45-minute chat, I gleefully left the office and immediately text my parents that my boss had just insinuated giving me a job in the future after law school. Two weeks before exiting the internship, I interviewed my boss for a project I was doing for a summer leadership conference I was attending, Collegiate Leadership Jacksonville, and she confirmed my hunch by telling me, “You know why I was asking about your future plans, right?  It’s because I’d like to have you intern with us here again and come back to us after law school. I keep my eye out for motivated, mature students like you.”

This summer certainly ignited my motivated and mature side.  I was in the courtroom for the sentencing hearing of a mother who pled guilty to charges of overdosing and killing her four-year-old son.  I met a man in county jail who was about to serve a 14-year imprisonment simply for having a gun.  I observed court clerks mock a mentally challenged woman in first appearance court.  I rode along with a police officer and went with him on call to three different sexual assault crimes and one case of trespassing.  I filled arrest warrant files.  I accidentally made over 100 copies of a document I was attempting to fax.  Every day I learned something new, whether about the law, or a previously existent but undefined part of myself.  It has been an absolute blessing and honor to attend Scripps College and be a part of programs such as this.

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.