Midpoint of Internship

This blog has gotten off to a bit of a late start, and I am now about halfway through my internship with the GAO. I think that I was in the somewhat unique position of coming onto an engagement just as it was starting. Unlike some of my fellow interns who jumped right into the middle of the project, I've been given the opportunity to see what the beginning stages of the GAO process is like. Since my supervisors had not previously done research on the topic of our engagement, I did not feel like I was already behind and had a lot of catching up to do, which took away a lot of the stress of starting the internship.

The main task at hand has been to gather as much background information as possible to help our team become comfortable and knowledgeable about the topic so that we know how to effectively design the project and ask the right questions when we go out and do interviews. In the past couple of weeks I have been busy organizing a background paper. Based on my preliminary research and text of the mandate that we are answering, I developed an outline for the paper. I've also gotten the opportunity to sit in on meetings with the requesters/clients and help conduct interviews to aid us in data gathering. More recently, the biggest undertaking has been an extensive literature review. I must admit that this is not the most exciting part of the job, but overall I think the project itself is very interesting, and I like that I have been able to perform a broad range of tasks.