Hey everyone!

My name is Kaitlyn Ryan and I'm a sophomore Political Science major at Xavier University in Cinncinati, Ohio but I'm originally from Great Barrington, Massachusetts (see map below)

When I'm at school I try to keep as busy as possible by tutoring at our local Boys and Girls club, being an active member of our Poli Sci club, and going to as many basketball games as I can. Our men's basketball team is a pretty big deal on campus and my roommates and I tend to get pretty into the games because the atmosphere is insane! I was basically brought up on sports so it's nice to go to a school where sports are big.

This is a few of my roommates (Erin, Chelsea, & Avelina) and me before a game this year

This semester I'm interning at the Democractic National Committee in the communications department. So far it has been amazing! In my first 3 days at the DNC I've gotten to see Brad Woodhouse, DNC communications director, do an interview on MSNBC, take a Capitol tour with my fellow interns and call Florida news sources about a press conference our chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was holding this past week. I have 2 other great interns in my department, Greta who goes to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and David, a grad student at Georgetown who is from England. It's literally been surreal thus far so I can only imagine what the rest of the semester holds.

I live in the Residential and Academic Facility (RAF) in which The Washington Center provides housing for all students. I live in a 2-bedroom apartment with 3 other girls who are all awesome. Loris, from Mexico, is interning at the Trust for the National Mall, Stephanie, born in Argentina but lives in Cleveland, is interning at a private law firm, and Anna, who actually lives only 30 minutes away from me at home, is interning at the Republican National Committee.

They all seem to have particularly generous bosses because on Wednesday Stephanie came home with 2 tickets to the Wizards-Bobcats, and Loris got us tickets to "The Two Men of Verona" on Friday (both of which were amazing!).

We also got a chance to go to the National Portrait Gallery as part of Orientation on Monday. It was a lot of fun and the first opportunity we had to start getting to know our fellow TWC interns!

This was my favorite piece.

The artist used a license plate from each state to write out the Preamble!

Well, hopefully my life remains this exciting so I have a lot of stuff to write about in my following posts!