Washington, DC Career Trip

There’s currently a vacation-week feel to Fletcher, with empty classrooms and strangely quiet hallways. An extension of Presidents’ Day to a week-long holiday, perhaps? Good guess, but wrong. The lull is due to the annual Washington, DC career trip administered by the Office of Career Services (OCS). OCS has something going on at pretty much all times throughout the year, but even by their busy standards it’s fair to say that the DC Career Trip is their equivalent of the Super Bowl. Classes are cancelled today and tomorrow to allow students to head south to pack in as much networking and information-gathering as they can. There are a lot of moving parts over the next two days, including around two dozen daily site visits to organizations ranging from Chemonics and USAID to CSIS and RAND. There are also Fletcher Alumni Association of Color and Fletcher Women’s Network Panels, a reception at the National Press Club, and a variety of other informal meetings and networking opportunities. The omnipresent Fletcher alumni network is taking a lot of coffee meetings and making a fair amount of couch space available. While DC denizens may be struggling with through their current brush with a “wintry mix” – that favorite New England euphemism for a combination of snow, rain, slush, sandy gravel, and misery – hardy Fletcher students are unlikely to be fazed by a bit of weather. Students return from the DC trip each year a bit exhausted, to be sure, but also energized and full of ideas for their next steps, be it summer internship planning or post-graduation career plans. We’ll be anxious to hear more about this year’s trip, and you’ll read more details about summer internships and post-Fletcher careers in this space later in the year!