Hartman earned her degree in Political Science and International Relations, two majors that she has in common with most of her peer interns. She said only five young professionals were accepted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee internship this fall, making it one of the most “prestigious” internships on “the Hill.”
“These interns will have the opportunity to experience firsthand how the Senate navigates global challenges and how the United States must continue to be a leader in addressing them...,” Ranking Member, Senator Jim Risch said in a press statement.
Preparing for success
During the summer before her senior year, Hartman interned in Senator Marco Rubio’s Jacksonville office where she dealt mostly with constituent services.
“It taught me how the government actually works day-to-day and how they help the community on a local level,” she said
Through this role, Hartman said she realized her strength in policy research. And after expressing interest in foreign affairs to her team in Senator Rubio’s office, this role also helped her find the next door in her early career.
“They said they had a team on [the Foreign Relations] committee, and they pushed me to apply,” she said.
A Day in the Life of a “Hill-tern”
Hartman said a typical day of her internship starts with steps we’re all familiar with: get caught up on email and get caught up on the news.
There are seven subcommittees within the Foreign Relations Committee, representing seven different regions of the world. Each morning, Hartman said her team of five will receive their daily assignments from the committee at-large. This means that their ever-changing checklist of research projects, policy tasks, and meetings spans across the teams and policy areas.
“Because there's so much work, you get to work with every single team,” Hartman said.
She said it's nice that they’re given freedom to choose who will take each assignment on any given day; it gives them a chance to exercise their areas of academic expertise as current students and recent graduates.
“I deal with mostly researching policy issues,” Hartman said. “So, if there's a bill that they need read, if there's a certain issue that needs to be researched amongst a whole list of bills, I would go into that and do whatever tasks they need me to do.”
Hartman was pleasantly surprised that she and her fellow interns weren’t just put “in a back room” and given a pile of work to get through. She also has the chance to attend committee hearings, briefings, and private meetings with federal agencies where she takes notes and drafts memos for the subcommittees.
“It's pretty cool because I can go back and forth from the Senate, the Capitol, and then the house- It's all right there,” she said. “It's pretty amazing.”
It’s a feeling unique to working in the nation's capitol, but one that Hartman said she’s acclimated to.
“You start getting used to it,” she said. “Even when you walk down the hallway, you can see a senator or you can see a president from a different country, a prime minister even. And so, you just kind of fall into that shock of everything and it becomes normal.”
Gratitude for the past and excitement for the future
Looking back to where her passion for foreign affairs began, Hartman said she found inspiration from her peers and professors at Flagler.
“I always knew I wanted to work in the government, but I wasn't really sure what career path I wanted to take,” Hartman said.
She said she was grateful to befriend and learn from many of the international students studying abroad at Flagler, piquing her interest in specific areas of foreign affairs like U.S. and Latin America relations.
Thinking back to classes like “Politics in the Middle East” and “American Government,” Hartman is also appreciative that her professors where able to integrate their expertise in political science with specific analysis of ongoing global events.
“You can't have domestic politics without international studies,” Hartman said. “They always coincide, whether you see it on a daily basis or not.”
For any Flagler student interested in applying to this role or similar internships on Capitol Hill, she offered one piece of advice, “Do not stress and feel like you're not qualified enough. Because if I thought that way, I would have missed this opportunity. You just never know.”
The breadth of experience Hartman gained on the committee opened her eyes to the many possible areas of foreign relations she could focus on in the future. And while she’s unsure exactly what region she will specialize in or where she will end up, she plans to stay in D.C. for now while she finds the right job.
She said it even reminds her a little bit of St. Augustine with the monuments and rich history.
“I love being surrounded by people who want to talk about politics, who have the same interests as me,” Hartman said. “This is the perfect place for my career, so I feel like I'm thriving in this space.”
