Home Again - Time for Reflection

I was up early this Monday morning. Missing a week of school is tough; there is quite a pile of books on my bedroom floor and multiple papers are waiting to be written. However, the Sacramento internship was definitely worth it. I walked across SBCC’s campus this morning, for the first time in 11 days, with a new sense of motivation and with a different approach to learning. Hundreds of thousands of college students are stuck in classrooms for hours every day trying to save humanity and establish a foundation for a brighter future. I have come to believe that real knowledge is obtained through experience and practice, and the Sacramento Internship Program provided us with important information we would never have been able to achieve in a classroom. This amazing opportunity has opened my eyes in many ways. Not only did we learn about California’s politics, but also how to behave and dress in a formal situation, as well as how to contact and address professionals. Networking was a vital component of the program.

During our week in Sacramento we had a pretty hectic schedule and it was a lot to take in. Now, back in Santa Barbara, we can begin to sort the information received from the different meetings. The more it sinks in, the more I realize how valuable this chance was and I hope that other students from SBCC will get the same possibility to meet with these important people next year.

Some of us (the students in the program) are from Europe, and this internship gave us a deeper understanding of how California, one of the largest economies in the world, is governed. It is knowledge we can either use here or bring back to our respective home countries in order to globalize and make politics even more effective. This was a wonderful experience that will last for a lifetime, and hopefully open new doors to other exciting academic journeys in the future.

- Anna