Boarding the plane in Denver, I felt a nervous pit form in my stomach similar to that I used to get before playing a football game in high school. The butterflies grew out of the knowledge that I was taking the first step down a road that would undoubtedly change the whole course of my life. It felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, preparing to leap.
Hitting the ground in DC, the first thing I noticed was the suffocating heat. Being used to the weather at an altitude over a mile high, the combination of stifling heat and dense humidity felt like walking through a sauna all day. After sweating through two shirts and noting a desperate need for baby powder, I was all moved in to 1959 E street; my home away from home.
I didn’t have to wait until Tuesday to start meeting the 18 people I would be spending my summer with. Introduction after introduction, despite struggling to remember names, two things stuck with me: that my roommate Sean and I were drastically out-numbered, and that we were all very similar. I mean, obviously we are all journalism students. But for 19 kids varying in age and spread across the country we bonded extremely quickly. Before boot camp even started I knew I was in for one hell of a summer.
Having had time to speak with Amos a bit before coming to DC, I knew a little bit about what to expect from the course, including Amos’ passionate and somewhat boisterous style of presentation. I knew the work was going to be high-volume and intense, to quote one of my favorite lines from our fearless leader “we will have to produce 3 times the content on 3 different mediums in half the time and double the quality”. But I wasn’t prepared to trek the city in 95 degree heat. Absolutely not. The next 3 days, though, flew by. Even though the days were still long the fun and interesting work we did made a 10 hour day feel more like 2. I watched as everyone got frustrated trying to tell a person’s life story in 30 seconds, absorbed the raging inferno of knowledge and passion that is Andrea Seabrook, and spent a couple hours making crude animations and talking about life with J. Coming out the other side I feel prepared to take on not only the ungodly amount of work Amos will push on us, but also the immense opportunity an internship at Sirius/XM provides.
Sitting here looking out at the city from 11 stories up, I can’t help but feel at home. And although its mountains are made out of concrete and politicians roam instead of buffalo, it captured my heart. This is going to be one hell of a summer.
Nick Rothschild 