Why are you interested in a Congressional internship and how will it enhance your education and/or help you achieve your career goals?
Why are you interested in a Congressional internship and how will it enhance your education and/or help you achieve your career goals?
Why are you interested in a Congressional internship and how will it enhance your education and/or help you achieve your career goals?
There is a plethora of reasons why I am interested in becoming a congressional intern. Moreover, most of all I know that I can bring a lot of diversity into the program. I am openly gay and I don’t see very much support or leadership in Washington that is supportive of gay rights. This congressional internship would give me a voice that is representative of me and my fellow gay’s minority status.
Also, I have learned that life is all about networking. I know this to be true, because networking has really allowed me to transcend from the small high school and community college that I started at. My networking skills utilized at Texas Tech, has really allowed me to monopolize on undergraduate research and I’m now in a position to go to an Ivey league for graduate school. A person never knows who they will meet and this experience will open an enormous amount of doors for me. Moreover, my grades are just average, so I must rely on networking to be able to compete with 4.0 GPA students. I am pretty sure if Rick Perry can run for president with a 2.2 GPA, that I can be very competitive in this application process with a 3.3.
Such an opportunity could be very beneficial to my career. I currently work in a food science lab under Dr. Jessica Moses. She is definitely top five researchers at Texas Tech University (she is number one to me). She is one of my role models and I hope to run a lab like she does someday. Relevant to this application question, I see how her job is relevant to government. It is government grants that fund our lab and there have been many times that she has met with people of congress to discuss food safety.
I once had a director tell me that the government is such a mess, because there are not more scientists running it. Obviously, by looking at how my boss interacts with government officials have enlightened me to how much of a voice those scientists have in policy making. In seeing this, I have always thought that pursuing a master of science in law would be a possibility in my future.
II. What issues and/or policy areas would interest you as a Congressional intern and why?
I am interested in what role science plays in government. Also, if chosen to participate in this program, it would be an honor to represent Texas Tech as a future tier one research institution.
I would be interested in working in the office of a congressperson that sits on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. If the USA is to remain a superpower, then it is this committee that will play a major role in preventing us from becoming a superpower of some bygone golden age. Bottom line, more funding needs to be allocated to universities for research. Research labs should not have to turn to industry to provide funding for what the government should be doing.
Also, I am very interested in policy issues that are deemed controversial. I am very open on the stance that I take on some of these issues. I care about gay rights, but there is one other issue that I am more concerned with above all else. That issue is abortion. This is a legitimate issue that our government always struggles with from election to election. Everybody has an opinion on this issue, but yet people would rather deem it taboo. I know touchy subject and probably something an applicant should not touch in an application. However, I think it is far more dangerous to just ignore the issue and not talk about it. On the issue of abortion, I have always taken the stance that I don’t care about abortion in other parts of the world, but here in the USA, we can care for our own.
Thank you for considering my application!
David Leo Campos
Assignment status: Already Solved B
