Attack of the Zomployee: Part 1

 [Disclaimer: This story requires a slight sense of humor. In actuality, I'm really feelin' DC - and all the people have been much more likable than one would expect from a town of politicians.)

Today, I was wandering aimlessly around downtown DC, thinking only of how horrifically and unnaturally hot every inch of my body was very quickly becoming, when all of a sudden - the clock struck 5:00...

and so it began.

All at once - not slowly, not bit by bit, not even in alternating shifts - the entire workforce of Washington, DC emerged from the secret holes in which they'd been laboring, and crawled purposefully into the blazing sunlight - like zombies infected, now unavoidably programmed to kill.

Droves and droves of pallid men and women, clad in business suits spanning an endless array of neutral tones, quickly filled the vacant streets, covering the ground that only seconds before lay bereft of all life.

With eyes faced determinedly ahead, limbs swinging in unison, and feet moving at an eerily steady pace, the enormous mass of DC employees made their way from their offices of toil towards the nearest point of departure - Union Station.

Unaware that I would be caught in this strange cultural ritual, I failed to dress at all accordingly. My skin-tight yoga pants and arm-bearing spaghetti strap tank-top drew attention to my outsider status, a dangerous scent on which I feared the zombies would pick up - a signal to move in for the kill.

So I did what any fearful human being would in such a situation - I took refuge in camoflauge.
Though I could not alter what I was wearing, I could change my mannerisms, my thoughts, my objective.
Immediately I fell in line with the others, proceeding steadily towards the ultimate destination for which so many of the goal-oriented natives were bound.

Upon my arrival at Union Station, I descended for cover into the deeps of the metro, a place where my odd attire and all-too-alert mental state would be easily hidden among the eclectic swarms of travelers.

And so I made it to safety - though the fear of being discovered by the drones of DC will never - ever - let me rest.

The End.
...or is it?

Ombuddy

First Seminar! woot woot. I will never, ever, forget this day.

(brief pause to reference my notes)

OK. Today, we had as our guest Mr. Andy Alexander, ombudsman from The Washington Post.

Mr. Alexander was actually a pretty likable guy. Instead of talking down or preaching to the lowly students, he basically let us amateurs spend the entire class asking him questions. And can I just say how proud I am of our essentially entirely German/Norwegian class for asking a slew of hard-hitting, A+ questions? (note: The foreigners asked disgustingly better ones than any of us Americans - way to represent, natives)

So Double-A (mmhmm, bffolife) was from Ohio, worked for a paper there, then headed to Aussieland for a "yonk", after which he flew to Vietnam, then eventually ended up in foreign correspondence - for which he's traveled to over 50 countries in the last 30 or so years.


Now, as ombudsman, he's sort of like one giant check for The Washington Post - he kind of represents the people, voices their concerns, and does some self-correcting/verifying of the paper as well. That means the poor man has to deal with an unfortunate number of very tactless, obnoxious, overly-eccentric (read psycho) Post readers, not to mention the staff, who often understandably does not approve of his good-intentioned corrections.

Good thing the time limit on ombudsman is 2 years. I seriously don't know how a person can take that much crap from everyone at once and still maintain his sanity. I'm sure he's probably about ready to retire on a desert island or in some forbidden forest completely secluded from the human kind.

I can barely stand the metro at rush hour, listening to one mind-numbing complaint after another, (granted a good 50% of that could very well be me mistaking my own whining for an external source), and this guy gets 90 calls from 'passionate' readers a day, ripping on how the middle name of someones great aunt Justine is Sara 'spelled with an A, NOT an H!' !?

Props, Mr. Alexander, I salute you.

And here's the lucky fellow with Professor Gil Klein - what charming fellows :)

PS: Did you know the most profitable year for newspapers was 2000? Who'dathunkit.

Pointless Pontificating

Today I do not feel witty or clever. At all. However, simply stating that may be witty and clever enough to fake my way through this post.

More than anything, I'd really like to be done writing and rewriting these tedious cover letters. No, I would not be honored to be a part of every single one of your institutions, and not every one of your companies would provide "an invaluable experience unobtainable elsewhere" ; however, pretending such is true has all but saved me during this difficult week of proving myself to countless managers and executives.

Honestly, my biggest concern at this point is which phone I should use my long-awaited AT&T upgrade on.

Iphone?
or
Blackberry?

yikes - life's heavy choices.
I mean, the Blackberry would give me marvelous access to my email, all while providing an acceptably easy keyboard to maneuver around

But the Iphone....

has apps.

This decision is actually surprisingly pertinent to my time in DC, as I have accessed and spent more time on my email during the past few days than I have over the past 3 years combined.

Anyhow, my friends and I went to Georgetown today to get in some good quality shopping time. My apparently overly ambitious goal was to find comfortable shoes, skinny khakis (that would not only work for seminar, but make a trendy & cute transition to street wear), and some sort of bottoms that didn't consist of yoga-wear/spandex material (of which 96.5% of my clothes are made). However, this mission terminated in a giant FAIL and a surrender to Subway - my new favorite spot for cheap, slightly-less-than-mediocre-food.

During our outing, however, we all addressed the fact that DC is a lot nicer/better/cooler and safer-feeling than any city we've been in. It's not so much a city as an institution in itself. It's cleaner than any place I've been, and the plethora of readily-available Chipotles is an unexpected, but nonetheless significant benefit.

In addition, there seems to be an obscene number of Whole Foods. You'd think that if the leaders of our nation lead such healthy lifestyles the rest of the obese country would follow suit.

But then you turn the corner and there's another Chipotle, and you understand that some temptations cannot be ignored.

All in all, it was a semi-successful day, culminating in a dorm-room gathering and the procrastination of yet another half-faked cover letter.

I apologize for the undirected nature of this post. The next shall have more purpose, I assure. But you know what kids? Sundays are allowed to be purposeless.


:)

Footwear Fail

Ow.
Ow ow ow ow ow.

Dear friends, I am going to give those of you considering a trip to Washington, DC a little advice. Yes, it's important to get a SmartCard for the metro/buses. And true, being aware of current events helps facillitate communication 90% of the time. But there's one wee tidbit of information that I wish someone would have told me before I began this never-ending hunt for an internship.

Wear comfortable shoes.

In all honesty, how can these interviewers expect us to maneuver our way around downtown DC-up and down eternally broken escalators, dashing across crosswalks, hopping onto crowded buses-all while sporting our chique little (and terribly-awkwardly shaped) pair of (fill in the blank with favorite impractical brand) 10-inch heels??

Granted, maybe trekking around the city once or twice in these absurd fashion-concoctions would cause minimal, though by no means pleasurable, pain. It's only around the fourth or fifth journey to a new poorly-described location that one begins contemplating whether or not taking an unpaid internship at the local CVS would be preferable to taking one more step in the torture devices now securely strapped to your feet.

So, it is for this reason that I made the executive decision to walk to my interview today in my $1 Old Navy shower shoes. What a great way to beat the system but stay in the game...right? Well, everything's going swell, I make my way from the metro to the interview site smoothly (with a few stares, of course, but that's to be expected when dressed from head to ... ankle in a full suit, only to bottom-it-off with 2 lovely gray pieces of plastic), and quickly change from plastic to pointy toe in a slightly deserted parking lot not far from my destination point.

And tada! Shoe success. All said and done, that wasn't as awkward as I had expected, and it was totally worth my unmarred heel and toes.

I felt great, I looked great, and the interview went ... well, not great, but decently enough. And as Mr. Producer kindly escorted me from the conference room, he turned to me with a just-slightly-too-sweet smile -

"Well, I noticed you were here early." Awkward pause. "I saw you changing your shoes outside the building."

...

And guess who wore her unnaturally pointy obviously-not-made-for-human-feet-shoes for the rest of the day?
Well hello there, blisters.

New News is Good News

Hello there.

My name is Gabrielle, but after a short-stint of attempting to sound professional and adult, I've fallen back upon Gabby. Last Tuesday, August 17th, I flew into Washington DC with my mom, sister and $130 worth of over-the-limit luggage weight fees, to start American University's Washington Semester Journalism Program.

Now that I'm semi-settled in, I'm ready to start blogging about what is sure to be a completely unique experience. I've never had a roommate, I've never spent a semester out of my home state, and I've never worn a business suit....until this past week. So, hello there changes-I'll attempt to take you all in stride.

And now I'm tapping my foot repeatedly on the printer beneath my desk, contemplating how exactly to describe the emotions I'm feeling at this very moment.

Let's break it down.
 #1. Excited. I'm in DC, I'm learning my way around what I am convinced are the deepest-dug metros on earth,  I'm meeting new and sometimes intimidating people, and I'm trying so many new things in such a short time that my little brain can hardly keep up.
 #2. Overwhelmed. I'm in DC, I'm learning my way around what I suspect are most certainly the deepest-dug metros on earth, I'm meeting new and sometimes intimidating (read very well-dressed) people, and I'm trying so many new things in such a short time that my, what I'm sure is a perfectly acceptable-sized brain, can hardly keep up.
(OK, that was admittedly a cop-out, but nonetheless, it's true)
 #3. Nervous. I have interviews for internships lined up this week for which I should be preparing a list of I-rehearsed-this-but-doesn't-my-delivery-sound-unrehearsed type questions, yet somehow all I can think about is how I'm going to iron out the horribly-unprofessional looking creases riddling my one-and-only, had-to-get-this-at-the-last-minute, not very well made suit.

Anyhow, so this is the point in the evening where I begin to semi-neurotically reassure myself that I am indeed a witty, charismatic and disarmingly charming, mid-western college student and that, if my interviewers aren't brilliant enough to agree - well, it's their loss.

All this mental activity and it's only my first week in DC! Yet, somehow I, a girl who enjoys her relaxation time just as much (and probably slightly more) than the next person, is still excited and enthused about being here. I think it's because even though it's hectic, it's all new.

I'm not cramming for a terribly mundane Comm. 351 quiz, or frantically scribbling flashcards and drilling them into my memory. I'm exploring a city and I'm meeting people who actually make things happen. And as much as I'm not the type of person who likes to admit this - the administrators were right. This is worth it. This is something completely new for which there is no comparison.

So am I excited to wake up at 7:00 tomorrow to be at an interview by 11:00, followed by which I will cross-town to arrive at yet another examination of my probably less-than-ideal qualifications? YES! ... or Yes. Maybe the caps were overdoing it. Nonetheless, DC has so much to offer that the positives have, as of yet, outweighed the negatives far more than my suitcases did the TSA limit.

Wish me luck,

Gabby