As the summer unwinds, we say goodbye to more of our interns. Today was Sebastian’s last day as our intern. He heads to Leeds University to finish his third year of law school.
Sebastian is a very self assured and intelligent young man. When he joined us, I set an agenda to push him out of his comfort zone and to make him question his own worldviews. He is more right wing than most of our progressive interns. In addition, he had no prior or minimal interactions with the poor.
His research on quantitative easing was very good and he didn’t really need to develop more skills on the policy front. His Parliament legal research was also decent and efficient. He just needed to work more on the empathy front. Thus, I directed the staff to make sure that he was assigned more social work with the Desa Mentari folks.
In the end, I believed that he had a personal development breakthrough. Sebastian leaves my office a more rounded person. I am certain he will succeed in whatever he chooses to do. The P104 office wishes him the very best and look forward to his many returns to see us.
BTW, it was also Ivan’s birthday today. He turned 20. The staff got him some chocolate chip ice-cream. I am not sure if he shared the ice-cream with anyone, but I sure didn’t get any! Happy Birthday Ivan!
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