Confused students looking for a career in politics can now turn to a new Web resource.
Founded by a 23-year-old graduate student at George Washington University, politicsunder30.org is a Web site aimed at telling university students what it is like to work in the field of professional politics.
The site has blogs, guides and video anecdotes from various political professions. Sections of the Web site also offer information about lobbying, running for office and political internships, as well as interviews with many young people who hold prominent political positions.
Bryce Cullinane, a student in GW’s Graduate School of Public Management, is the Web site’s founder and director.
“One of the things that we wanted to address with Politics Under 30 is that if I’m a young person and I want to know what it’s really like to work in politics, it’s hard to find information and a lot of it might be based off of watching a fictional TV show,” Cullinane told The Eagle.
The site launched on Sept. 14 and has already attracted a viewership of 200 hits per day. “And that’s just from sending it in e-mails to our friends,” said Cullinane.
Members of the advisory board of politicsunder30.org include founders and directors of other various political organizations, including Rock the Vote, Students for Barack Obama and 18 in ‘08.
The site has 11 unpaid interns and one paid director. George Washington University provides them their name and some funding for the startup, but most of the work is being done by graduate students attending GW’s Graduate School of Political Management.
“I think it’s an interesting site and a good tool to kind of get a good start,” said Chris Hughes, a career adviser in the School of Public Affairs at AU. “One of the things that I like [are] the blog entries of people who are recent graduates or under 30.”
AU students who are looking to get involved in professional politics have their own resources available at the university.
The CareerCenter provides SPA counseling to students and internship listings to anyone looking to intern on Capitol Hill.
Hughes says that students should get political internships to gain firsthand knowledge. One tip from Hughes is to consider a career in politics even if you’re not in SPA.
“There are opportunities, even for students in other schools like [the College of Arts and Sciences], but particularly [the School of Communication] and [the School of International Service] to maybe go into the political field,” Hughes said.
Hughes described specific examples of non-SPA students working in the professional political field.
“For example SOC students have knowledge of blogging, of social media and journalism. And those skills are useful for potential careers on Capitol Hill in maybe the press office,” he said. “For SIS students, working on Capitol Hill might mean maybe doing an internship for someone on one of the foreign relations committees,” Hughes said.
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