Last Days In Dallas

It’s time to start the internship. And that means moving interstate. I’m going to miss Texas. 

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Well, the GLP is over with, we had our final presentation on Tuesday, an all-morning event where each GLP group presented a summary of their experiences to faculty and local business leaders. Our group finished the presentation with a video slideshow of the trip, which you can see here. On the day, most of us had come down with head colds after returning to Texas, which made it hard to keep energised, but we got through the presentation unscathed.

After that, it was a final GLP paper to write, and then the first year of the program was over. The time has flown by so fast. It seems like it was yesterday that I got off the plane in the blistering heat of a Dallas summer to make my way to my new home. And now it’s time to move on, albeit temporarily.

My summer internship starts on Tuesday, and so the past week has entailed packing my gear, moving furniture into storage, and then cleaning out the apartment. Not that we had a massive job to do; the demands of study meant that my housemate and I barely used the place. Many areas of the apartment were virtually untouched, and for only the second time during my stay I opened the storage cupboard on the porch, largely to verify that it was indeed still a storage cupboard (it was, much to my disappointment).

On the final night in Dallas, a group of us MA/MBAs headed across town to a patio bar for some live music and farewell drinks. Whilst a few of us are staying in the area for the summer, most of us are scattering to different parts of the country. We won’t likely see each other until we get to Italy in September to start the exchange portion of the MA/MBA program, so it was a bittersweet moment saying goodbye. The group has really supported each other throughout the first year, offering encouragement and advice and the occasional opportunity to let off steam.

Yesterday morning I got up early, grabbed a car to the airport and caught a flight over to Washington D.C. where I’ll be living for the next 12 weeks. I’m staying just north of the city in a leafy suburb full of 1930’s double story houses. My host is a deputy director of a local museum, and already we’ve had some scintillating chats about the non-profit sector.

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Already I’m missing Dallas. It’s true what they say about Texas – it’s a different country. There’s already a bit of culture shock setting in, ranging from differences in mannerisms, to the fact that the supermarkets don’t sell beer here (which on consideration will probably help my budget), to knowing that I probably won’t be able to get decent BBQ or Tex-Mex for a while.

But with the loss of some things comes the gain of others. I’m sure that I’ll discover some great things here in D.C., and I’m looking forward to finding them.