Lessons from D.C.

It was then that her supervisors gathered her and her fellow interns and informed them they were not legally allowed to return to work the following day due to a federal government shutdown. After years of anticipation, Dusek’s dismissal was disappointing. For Baylor interns who planned to be in the city for just a few short months, a shutdown lasting 43 days was no small loss. 

Dusek has known she would participate in the Baylor in Washington Program since high school.

“Before I even got my Baylor acceptance, I learned about the program,” Dusek said. From that moment, she knew, “If I get into Baylor, I have to do this.” 

Senior Shriya Vidhyaprakash wasn’t far behind and had known she would apply since hearing about the program her freshman year at Baylor.

“I was prepping my schedule and everything for it,” Vidhyaprakash said. “I thought it would be a great professional experience. I had never done anything like that.” 

Like most of their cohort, Dusek and Vidhyaprakash are planners. They have detailed agendas, ambitious goals, and innovative ideas for improving the world around them. They are highly determined, exceptionally focused, and hungry to make a difference. Also, like most of their cohort, Dusek and Vidhyaprakash worked hard in their early undergraduate careers and secured prestigious internship positions to be completed during their participation in the fall 2025 Baylor in Washington program. However, both of these students’ dreams of working in Washington, D.C., came to a crashing halt on October 1.

Since 2015, the Baylor in Washington Semester Program has provided students the opportunity to intern in the highest levels of government. Rather than taking a full course load, students complete a nearly full-time internship, earning them 9 hours of credit and providing them with hands-on experience in their field.

This flexibility allows students to apply to some of the most competitive and prestigious internships in D.C. For ambitious students like Dusek and Vidhyaprakash, alongside the rest of their cohort, who are interested in pursuing careers as lawyers, government officials, and public servants, this unique Baylor program is a gift. However, for this cohort, the journey into public service was tougher than anticipated, with lessons learned through more hard knocks than expected.

One of the earliest and most tangible impacts of the federal government shutdown, which began shortly after Baylor in Washington students settled in D.C., was the suspension of pay for federal employees. This shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, meant over 1 million government employees were working without a paycheck. Another roughly 670,000 employees were furloughed, including interns.

Kaitlynn Clint, a junior from Highlands Ranch, Colorado, was also interning on Capitol Hill and was let go. Clint, unlike Dusek and Vidhyaprakash, came to D.C. with very few expectations. She applied to internships across fields before eventually choosing her role on Capitol Hill.

While Clint had no prewritten script for what her D.C. semester was going to look like, and went into the program with “open hands,” she certainly didn’t expect to be out of a job within her first few months there.

“We were so bored,” Clint recalled, laughing to herself. “It was a weird shift because you go from being busy … every single day, and then it was like everything stopped.”

The shutdown reminded Clint of another time in her life when all activity came to a halt.

“In a way, it felt COVID-esque,” she explained. 

Vidhyaprakash, who was also quickly furloughed from her position, couldn’t believe the situation she found herself in. The whole thing felt like a strange joke to her, and she was positive it would resolve itself. In fact, she was convinced the whole thing would blow over within a week.

“I kind of thought it would be a 3- to 4-day thing the media would blow up about, and then we would all get back to work, but that was not what happened,” she said.

Following their dismissals, Clint, Dusek, and Vidhyaprakash all found themself in a state of disbelief. Like Vidhyaprakash, students who had been furloughed were operating under the assumption the shutdown would last no more than a week and, in fact, relished the idea of a short break.

“I could take a week off,” Clint said. “Honestly, I was hitting the burnout stage.”

Other interns were initially jealous of the unexpected time off members of their cohort were getting.

“I envied them at the beginning, but not at the end,” said cohort member Bella Burns, a Baylor senior who was able to keep her role interning in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Although Burns was also interning within the federal government, she believes there are a few reasons she was able to keep her position.

“The main reason was essentially that I was already unpaid in the first place,” Burns explained.

“The pace of my work slowed,” Burns said. “… In the past, they’ll have interns sprinting down the office because their deadlines are that close. It’s just very intense. I didn’t get to feel a ton of the intensity.”

Whether facing a slower pace of work or furloughs, the 2025 Baylor in Washington cohort could easily have given up amid adversity, disappointment, and unmet expectations. But a partnership between students, Baylor in Washington staff, and Baylor’s extensive D.C. alumni network quickly emerged, helped get these students back on track.

Once it became clear this shutdown wouldn’t end anytime soon, program director Hannah Wardell Metcalf jumped into action, creating a list of professional development opportunities for Baylor students to fulfill in place of their internships.

“For those of us who wanted to go to law school, we could go visit a class at the Catholic University of America, which was really interesting. There was also a law school fair at GW that we could go to,” Vidhyaprakash explained.

Metcalf arranged for students to attend conferences covering topics like national security and religion at various organizations and think tanks.

“Baylor has amazing connections up there, and they were able to get us into these seminars you’d normally have to pay for,” explained Dusek. 

For some of these students, these professional outings were life-changing. Clint, who entered the program thinking she wanted to be a lawyer, ended her time in D.C. having decided instead to pursue a career in national security, in part due to a national security conference she attended while furloughed.

In addition to curating a list of professional growth opportunities for Baylor students, the Baylor in Washington staff was also working behind the scenes with its D.C. network to find new internships for students who were furloughed.

For Dusek, this new internship was far more impactful than she could have expected. Dusek was relocated from her Capitol Hill internship to the Trinity Forum: a Christian nonprofit group aimed at helping Christian leaders thoughtfully engage with the world around them. The culture of Dusek’s previous office, which was fast-paced, intense, and high-pressure, could not have differed more from the Trinity Forum offices, which had a much slower and more intentional approach to their work. Dusek, surprisingly, found herself drawn to the work and culture of the Trinity Forum rather than the internship she planned in the first place.

“It did pique my interest a little bit more, especially comparing the two,” Dusek said.

Vidhyaprakash appreciated how her new internship placement working for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni allowed her to expand her community.

“As sad as the shutdown was, I’m glad I had the experience,” Vidhyaprakash said. “It gave me a whole new group of people I’m now connected with, that know me, and that I got to learn from.”

While a shutdown was nobody’s first choice, for many of these students it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. While cohort members agreed their professional and academic experiences in D.C. were highly valuable, they found the most significant impact was their personal growth and the friendships they forged with one another.

“It was an incredible blessing, our cohort,” Clint said. “We were extremely understanding and willing to have conversations across ideological divides. […] There were people from all across the political spectrum, all across religious perspectives, […] and we all met each other where we were at. We were honest, open, and vulnerable, so there was never any sort of tension in those conversations.”

This kind of open discourse quickly fostered trust and friendship amongst the group. The ability to have healthy conversations across political divides is challenging, but the culture curated among this group of students made it possible.

“Baylor students are unique,” said Clint. “That wasn’t my experience talking with everybody. It truly is Baylor.”