{"id":762,"date":"2016-08-18T15:50:04","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T19:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/?p=762"},"modified":"2018-04-18T13:33:29","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T17:33:29","slug":"internship-blog-series-dylan-ashdown-office-of-public-affairs-u-s-department-of-homeland-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/2016\/08\/18\/internship-blog-series-dylan-ashdown-office-of-public-affairs-u-s-department-of-homeland-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Internship Blog Series: Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Homeland Security"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dylan<\/a><\/p>\n

Finding a Home at Homeland Security<\/p>\n

Hello, my name is Dylan Ashdown and I am currently a Public Affairs intern in the Office of Multimedia, Motion Pictures, and Television, Office of Public Affairs, Department of Homeland Security (DHS). At Seton Hall, I am finishing up two Master\u2019s degrees which will be awarded to me at the end of my internship; one degree will be in Diplomacy and International Relations and the other is in Strategic Communication. This internship has been very beneficial and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested!<\/p>\n

I have the \u201ccool\u201d internship. I work directly with the writers and producers of documentaries, television shows, and feature films, along with other \u201cnon-news\u201d media stakeholders. Both of my degrees have been of use in this internship. The other day a writer reached out to our office requesting DHS\u2019s help with their show. I ended up spending a few hours researching where I would defect if I was a scientist escaping from an evil government in New York City for a script the writer was working on. This was something that was very relevant to my Diplomacy schooling. In terms of my Strategic Communication classes, I have put together pitch plans for movie producers and interviewed cybersecurity professionals, and technology experts\/inventors (all of whom one can find in the Homeland Security).
\nThere is always something exciting happening at DHS. For example, today I attended the daily morning briefing and found out that I was meeting the Secretary of Homeland Security in three hours. Three hour later, I am sitting in a room with 15 other interns getting a briefing directly from the Secretary. This is not your normal internship experience!<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the best thing about my internship hasn\u2019t been meeting politically famous people; the best part has been the mentorship that I have received from my supervisor. I never really understood the meaning of a mentor until I started this internship. I asked more questions in my month here at DHS than I ever did in my six years of school and my mentor has gone out of his way to answer all of them. I have learned how to walk, talk, and behave as a public affairs professional in Washington D.C. because of the hours that I have spent with my mentor and because of how much he trusts me to handle projects on my own.<\/p>\n

The most rewarding part of my internship is knowing that my work has a direct impact on educating the American people on the work of the Department of Homeland Security. I am very happy that I chose to intern at the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Public Affairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I have learned how to walk, talk, and behave as a public affairs professional in Washington D.C. because of the hours that I have spent with my mentor.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":343,"featured_media":763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[62,36,61,63],"class_list":["post-762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-graduate-students","category-internship-experiences","tag-communication","tag-diplomacy","tag-public-affairs","tag-security"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/343"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1096,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions\/1096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/schoolofdiplomacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}