Arriving just last night, more than 130 students rushed the Baldwin Wallace University campus...among them, was someone special, Marina Ross.
“I do love politics, and so I find it very interesting, and there’s so much into it that’s behind the scenes. I’m looking forward to seeing it firsthand.”
She’s a non-traditional student, studying accounting at BW, and decided she wanted to go back to school to help get her feet wet in the work world again.
“I needed to be marketable; joining the workforce when you’re in your mid to late 30s ya know there’s lots of competition,” she said.
A former military vet of six years and mom of three, she tells me going back to school now in life, hasn't been easy.
“Well it’s stressful. It’s mostly juggling the school and the kids and the kid’s school, and my husband, you know all of those things, but I can’t be as involved as I would like to be.”
And that’s why this is the first year The Washington Center has opened a special scholarship for 24 students like her to participate in the special two week internship.
“They may have jobs, they have lives, they have kids, so for them to be able to take a two week period of time where they can really dedicate to this type of thing can be difficult,” said Kevin Nunley, Vice President of The Washington Center.
The non-partisan non-profit usually snags student perspectives across the country every year for internships in Washington DC, but this year they’ll be right here in Cleveland for the RNC.
“For them, it’s going to be a really impactful week and they’ll get to see a lot of the movement and what happens around this huge event” said Nunley.
This week students will go through a series of seminars on the significance of conventions, and then next week, the hands on work.
“We place them in what we call our field work, and so then we work with a variety of different agencies whether that be media outlets, to house of delegates to committee on arrangements.”
Working with the Nevada delegates, Ross told me she’ll be soaking up every minute of it.
“I think it will feel electrifying and I think kind of nerve-wracking…I’ll probably be feeling the fatigue two weeks from now (laughs).”
Like Ross, there will be other interns placed with at least nine other state delegations, doing anything from tweeting and monitoring social media, to arrange parties and meetings for the delegates.
The Washington Center will also have about the same number of students doing similar tasks at the democratic national convention in Philadelphia.
