So you decided to spend the summer in the capital of the good ol’ U.S.of A — nice choice. Someone once said you have about a one percent chance of coming to D.C. and getting famous, five percent of getting rich and a 100 percent of actually learning something. So there you go: between happy hours with your unpaid intern friends, drunken monuments, the Jumbo Slice and Ben’s Chili Bowl, you've got the Supreme Court decisions, museums and important speaker events. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to stock up on business cards and rub elbows with the people of This Town. You’re so close to all this power, you can feel it.
Now consider this: walking outside makes you wonder why you ever chose this sweltering sweaty sauna of a city. Walking into your office means dipping into an icebox that just gets colder. What are you supposed to wear to trek to work? Who knows. D.C. is also a huge tourist trap, which means dodging in and out of clusters of people walking down the street and yelling at them to stand on the right side of the escalator. Stay here long enough and you might too become the next Carlos Danger or Frank Underwood. After all, power is addictive.
-Julie Xie (DC)
Haven. Ha-ven. Not York but Haven. While 90 percent of my friends have spent their summers strutting around the smelly streets of New York, I’ve spent mine leisurely strolling around the less-stinky streets of New Haven, Connecticut. It’s been…an adjustment. After summerly stints
like Mexico City and Philly, the transition to the Nutmeg State was bumpy. Last summer, 5 p.m. was time for Copa Double Margs with a handful of friends. Now, it’s time to drag lonely ass home to do “research on my thesis” before making dinner, watching “The West Wing,” and going to bed. Sure, I’m in a “city”, but if you ask me, all of Connecticut is a suburb.
Still, it’s not all suburban gloom. I really love my internship and I know I couldn’t be doing it anywhere else. And also…pizza. Eight years ago I saw someone on the Food Network say that the best pizza in America was in New Haven and I thought it was a joke. It’s not. Whether you’re a Sally’s or a Pepe’s fan — the Pat’s and Geno’s of CT-thin crust — one bite of a crunchy white pie will temporarily boost your love for New Haven a thousand times over. Plus, my entire summer’s rent is less than any of my friends are paying for a single month in Nueva York. But even with all that, great pizza and a dirt-cheap sublet can’t make up for the blah, the boredom and the lack of drugstores within walking distance.
-Isa Oliveres (New Haven)New York City, center of the universe — right? Whether investment banking or magazine writing drew you to the city, you knew you were about to get the hookup of a lifetime. You noticed one friend after another graduate from a Spruce Street townhouse to a grubby Williamsburg walkup, and as you well know, NYC attracts almost every field’s most ambitious members. With the influx of interns from June to August, the city is basically summer camp for careerist college kids. So network, network, network. You meet people from all over the world. You find pretty much everything you could ever want to eat, see, buy or do, and then some. Your monthly Metro pass leaves you shakin' yo head at SEPTA — never did the El seem so inefficient. Here, you'll never get bored.
Beware, though, because loneliness can hit deeper than boredom. It's true: there's nothing worse than feeling all alone while surrounded by people. Sure, everyone and her roommate may be working in Midtown this summer, but Penn Station is still no Locust Walk. And your paycheck probably won’t go as far as you think. Used to that three-dollar morning latte? In NYC you pay five. Wanted an affordable but comfy sublet? Your West Philly pad now seems majestic. And no matter how much you’d hoped that internship would turn into a career, the pace of ruthless ambition is wearing. This city never sleeps, but sometimes we all need rest.
-Madeline Wattenbarger (NYC)
It’s pretty easy to get spoiled in Los Angeles. After all, you’re right in the entertainment capital of the world, where that guy ordering a latte — hold the milk — behind you is Josh Peck from “Drake and Josh” (who totally Neville Longbottom’d his way through puberty and is, according to some very reliable sources, a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am sort of guy). You watch the new episodes of “Whose Line is it Anyway?” and in the back of your mind you know the studio’s right down the block. And the weather. Good god, the weather. It didn’t rain once the first month you were here, and when it did, you were legitimately confused.
But perhaps the most incredible thing you take for granted is how much pure talent surrounds you. Everywhere you go, you’re mingling with some of the Best in the Industry — whether you know it or not. And if you are astute enough to realize that that guy sipping a cider next to you created “Hey Arnold!,” your fellow intern will introduce you, because in Hollywood it’s all about who you know, so as the summer goes on your contact book will just get bigger and bigger and bigger. Outside of name-dropping, though, there’s still a whole expansive city to explore, from the somewhat skeezy K-Town karaoke rooms to the beautiful views on the Hollywood Hills. Or, if you just want to chill in a rooftop pool, that’s cool, too. After all, it’s your LA story.
-Faryn Pearl (LA)
