By Kalia Xiong, Capitol Pathways Program Manager
The sun was out, the weather was warm—we couldn’t have asked for a nicer day to gather for our third Capitol Pathways cohort meeting! The meeting opened with a team building activity where interns learned more about each other in pairs and shared their learnings with the large group.
As students were heading into finals, we invited Chalonne Wilson (Evaluation Fellows Program, Nexus Community Partners) to lead a workshop on the importance of intentional and ongoing self-care. For this workshop, self-care was discussed in the context of understanding and retaining your authentic self. As self-care is healing that takes many forms—whether physical, mental or spiritual—it is different to everyone because no one is the same.
Chalonne Wilson spoke to our cohort about importance of self-care. Especially valuable as finals approach.
A key takeaway was the importance of understanding yourself—your values, your needs and etc.— in order to pursue self-care practices that work for you and allow you to thrive. Interns also practiced breathing exercises and shared examples of self-care activities that work for them, such as sleep, saying “no,” and watching bad reality TV shows.
As many of our interns were interested in pursuing law school, we were excited to welcome Brian Bell (Associate Attorney, Dorsey & Whitney LLP) as a guest speaker to discuss his career path, current work and answer questions from the cohort.
Brian Bell, former Citizens League board member, speaks to our cohort about his career journey in policy and law.
We cannot thank Chalonne and Brian enough for taking the time to join us! We also extend our thanks to the many guests who attended our social. We are humbled by your unwavering support—thank you!
Thank you for attending our social hour:
- Rebecca Mino: Second Harvest Heartland, Host Supervisor
- Annie Levenson-Falk: Citizens Utility Board, Program Founder
- Darrell Gerber: Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Host Supervisor
- Allison Wolff: Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Host Supervisor
- Clark Goldenrod: Minnesota Budget Project, Host Supervisor
- Sam Smith: NAMI Minnesota, Host Supervisor
- Kevin Goodno: Fredrickson & Byron P.A., Host Supervisor
- Anni Simmons: Fredrickson & Byron P.A., Host Supervisor
- Cap O’Rourke: O’Rourke Strategic Consulting, Host Supervisor
- Joe Gould: Gould Government Relations
- Heidi Larson: Goff Public, Citizens League Board Member
- James Nikolai: US Bank, Citizens League Board Member
- Angelica Klebsch: Citizens League
If you did not get the chance to join us for our social, there’s still time to meet the cohort! Join us for our LAST social of the session:
Stay updated with our Capitol Pathways website and connected on our Facebook and Twitter for program news and updates!
Capitol Pathways socials provide an opportunity for students to share their intern experiences with each other.
Capitol Pathways students Tytiana, Brandon and Justin