End of Internship Reflection

At the beginning of my internship at the Ruckelshaus Center, I wrote that I

hoped to gain exposure to and a better understanding of the policymaking
process in practice. I also mentioned that I wanted more experience working
as a member of a team of professionals. Over the past five months working
on the Snohomish Health District situation assessment, Ive had
opportunities to make strides in both areas, although in different directions
than I anticipated. First, while I thought I would be doing research that would
help inform the Snohomish Health Districts future direction, Ive learned that
policymaking is at least as much about people as it is about policy itself, and
that building relationships and considering emotions is the true work of
consensus building. I plan to pursue a career as a professor of political
science, and this is a reality that will make my future work both more difficult
and potentially far more impactful. Second, while I started out with the
modest goal of being useful to the project team in however small a capacity,
Ive realized that even as an intern, Ive had opportunities to develop my
identity as a leader as well as playing a supporting role. Most significantly, I
have learned to appreciate the complexity of navigating the confluence of
theory and practice in policymaking.

The Human Side of Policymaking

My time at the Ruckelshaus Center was more a complement to my

coursework in political science and law than an extension of it. As an
academic, Ive studied policymaking institutions through the lens of rational-
choice theory, but the practice of collaborative policy work demands taking a
wider view. Policy outcomes are influenced by individual leaders mental
models, the lenses through which they process reality, not just the facts
experts present to them. Laying out the facts and presenting polling
numbers isnt enough to change minds. Institutional change must be
psychological as well as structural; in order to be successful, policy
interventions must be emotionally as well as empirically correct.

As a student of representative institutions, it was fascinating for me to

observe a government agency suffering from a breakdown of this system.
The Snohomish Health District failed to leverage political accountability to
engage its own leadership. Yet, the Board of Health still utilizes the rhetoric
of democratic representation - while representation in practice has stalled,
the mental model of the importance of representation remains intact.
Changing the structure of the Board of Health, leveraging this mental model
in the process, may be the best way to change Board members behavior
and jumpstart functional governance at the Health District.

Creating My Own Role

I was surprised by and appreciative of how many opportunities I had to
engage as a full member of the project team, rather than as just a college
student providing administrative support. In addition to scheduling
interviews and taking notes, I helped conduct interviews, performed
independent research, shared my own opinions and theories in analysis
meetings, and wrote and edited a substantial portion of the assessment
report. While I was sometimes uncertain about my roles and responsibilities
on the team, the flip side of this uncertainty was a flexibility that allowed me
to make the internship my own: when I asked to practice interviewing and to
be given tougher writing assignments, Amanda and Kevin not only agreed,
but provided valuable coaching and advice along the way.

Skill Building

Taking on these tasks gave me opportunities to build on knowledge, skills,

and experience I brought to the internship. In the interviews, I used my
experience as a writing tutor to draw people out, listen actively, and ask
follow-up questions for clarity and detail. With Amanda and Kevins support, I
was able to build on these skills to conduct interviews in a consistent and
professional way. I also enjoyed the challenge of expanding my writing
experience from purely academic work to working on a report on a concrete
and specific situation. In some ways, the situation assessment was far easier
to write than my undergraduate thesis, which I also completed this summer,
but in others ways, it presented more difficulty - namely, capturing the
emotional correctness with which scholarly work is less concerned.

This project was my first experience conducting applied research with human
subjects. The exercise of maintaining objectivity in synthesizing interview
findings was one that I believe will serve me well in my future scholarly
research. Gaining exposure to strategies for managing responses to the
assessment teams findings was also valuable. I aspire to conduct my own
research that will have concrete policy implications, and anticipating and
managing how policymakers and activists respond to my work will improve
the potential for these implications to be realized.

As part of the project team, I also had unexpected opportunities to build my

leadership skills. This is one area in which I learned practice before theory - I
was facilitating analysis discussions and thinking critically about our report-
writing process long before Dans leadership training, when I learned to
identify these processes as components of leadership. Ive come to think
about leadership in a more holistic sense, less as a role and more as a set of
practices. One of the most important of these practices for me has been
figuring out where I can add value to the team. For example, while I dont
have the subject expertise in collaborative policy and situation assessments
that Amanda and Kevin do, as a writing tutor Ive had a lot of practice
facilitating conversations about the writing process. I was able to leverage
this experience to help organize the teams ideas into a report outline and
structure our collaborative writing process to promote efficiency and
consistent quality. Through this process, I experienced the importance of
intellectual and interpersonal flexibility as a member and occasional leader
of a team.

Looking to the Future

I sought out this internship because although I plan to pursue a career in

academia, I dont want to confine my education or my work to an ivory
tower. If my work as a scholar is to influence policy outcomes, it is essential
for me to understand the process and practice of policymaking, not just the
theory of what policy ought to look like. In addition to providing me with
opportunities to hone my skills as a researcher, writer, and collaborator, my
time at the Ruckelshaus Center has been an invaluable introduction to this
practice that will continue to inform my studies and work.