I spend a lot of my life thinking about politics. I do it formally through jobs, classes, research positions, extracurricular activities, etc., and I do it informally through constant delivery of my Takes on whatever the 24-hour news cycle is presenting at the moment to my roommates’ phones (and, in return, receiving theirs). It is what I love. Consuming information on the world and strategizing on how to fix it – drastic oversimplification that this presentation is – has been an obsession ever since I started to do so as a preteen. I can’t escape it, even when I am so disillusioned and pessimistic about the world and its future that I desperately want to.
If you can’t tell, these are the words of someone in need of a break. For this reason, I have been enjoying how this internship, while not not political, attacks issues from a legal perspective rather than a more typical political strategy one. It’s a different dynamic, and one situated in a landscape where there are clearer boundaries, clearer wins and losses (or at least the appearance of that). It’s also a perspective that I think I like, a framework that I find interesting to think within and a purpose that I find engaging.
Me being invested in my work, while a definite positive, has also been difficult in that it adds weight to what I do. I’ve found myself stressed about actually inputting what I do into the systems where it can be seen by other people; for the letter review we’ve been doing this week, I’ve been taking notes in my own spreadsheet first, and waiting to put it into the server after a few days of practice and working up the courage. I think this should get better as I adjust to the work and get more confident in what I’m doing. In fact, I think it’s mostly a good thing because it indicates that I care about performing my tasks well. I think because I have been so burnt out on things that I love for a while now, I’ve forgotten that there are other ways to do them and other ways to love them – this week has been a good reminder.