Last Day!

Hello, world.

Thursday was my last day at work. It was quite busy, in fact, as I tried (unsuccessfully) to wrap up my (huge) open project, finish my exit paperwork (successfully), fight off a cold (unsuccessfully), and send off a pile of "Don't email me for the next month, I won't be here!" emails, and fielding those responses. It was a fun day.

Around 1:45 we had a meeting in the conference room with one of the managers (my supervisor's boss, Henry), who thanked us for our service, gave us super cool DOJ OCL mugs (which, ironically, since we're a consumer protection department, had a TON of warning labels all over it), and told us all not to go to law school (classic Henry). My supervisor said that if we finished our open projects we could *gasp* leave early. The other interns were planning to do a happy hour at 5, so we all tried to hold out as long as possible to stay downtown until happy hour. Around 4:30 I walked my exit paperwork over, got it all signed, and (sadly) turned in my badge. Even though I'm coming back next semester, I guess technically by DOJ standards I'm being fired and re-hired, because otherwise I'd owe a TON of sick days after being home for a month, and that's not cool. But I'll have to go through the badge process (and security clearance, it seems) all over again in the Spring. A bit of a nuisance, but it's fine.

My boss looked at us and said, "So, 2 minutes, I'll meet you at the elevator?" That was a bit unexpected... I asked for 5, ran back to my office, cleaned out my desk, went to go throw away some papers, realized I no longer had my badge (so no access to the garbage room), and basically went into panic clean mode. It was fun! I got everything out in 5 minutes, and we got escorted out at 4:45.

And the best part: we were just barely early for happy hour.

Overall, this was a very successful and fun semester at DOJ. I learned a ton, both about myself and the law, and I'm excited to return in the Spring. Until then, my loyal readers, farewell, and happy holidays!