My internship with Lawyer’s Committee for Better Housing began on Monday. I’m going to go every Mondays and Wednesdays, and am going to be primarily working with Emanuel Camargo, who we call Manny for short.
Before I had started my internship I sat down with Manny for lunch to discuss what I would be doing for the semester. First Manny wanted to hear from me about my own experiences and my goals; I told him I was a Comparative Literature major, that I enjoyed working with people, and that I was considering law school. I wasn’t exactly sure as to what I wanted to get from my internship, only that I wanted to be engaged and active within the organization. I didn’t want to be pushing papers all day.
That was a big reason that I had chosen Lawyer’s Committee for Better Housing as my internship site. The ACM Chicago office keeps files on all their previous student interns, and as I looked through them it seemed as though most of the other law organizations would stick their students behind a desk somewhere, doing research. Lawyer’s Committee for Better Housing on the other hand, really seemed to try and give the intern a customized, personal experience. The reviews I read were glowing with praise for the people in the office and the work that they were given. They felt like they had made a real difference.
Even though I had yet to do any work in the office, I could understand the reasons for their praise. I had walked through their doors earlier that week to interview with Paul Beals. We quickly found that we were both from Portland— me from Beaverton, Paul from Tigard— and spent the first half hour swapping stories about our experiences there. I felt instantly at ease, as something about the way that Paul spoke to me seemed to say that he would value what I could contribute to the office. I didn’t think that I would be treated as a source of free labor.
So when Manny asked me over pizza what I hoped to do there, I didn’t have a definite idea of the type of work that I wanted to be doing. I had poked around on their website some and had been interested in a lot of the different aspects of the company, from the organizing to the advocacy, from direct intakes with clients to working with the lawyers. I was interested in learning about it all.
And that was what I told Manny: that I didn’t know anything in particular to work in, but that I was interested in learning as much as I could. I wanted to get the best look at the organization as I could.
In response to this, Manny began to tell me about his own personal experience, starting with his college graduation with a degree in literature. (Just like me!) After some flirtation with teaching and with law school (just like me!) Manny ended up working for several years for a company that enjoyed the boom of silicon valley. Manny had risen comfortably in the company that had originally hired him, and he said that he could’ve easily made it his career. But he knew that the work he was doing in silicon valley was not the sort of work that he wanted to be doing with his life. So he left.
Eventually he found himself working with Lawyer’s Committee for Better Housing. Currently he arranges and collaborates on intakes with many of the clients that come in. In the office he seems to have a hand in many of the goings on in the office, and is constantly seen to be making rounds and giving advice in a strong, calm voice. His voice would warm with just a touch of pride as he speaks of his recent promotion and his ambition to open his own organization, like Lawyer’s Committee for Better Housing, that would work as an advocate for those charged with drug offenses— a need that is currently unaddressed in the Chicago area.
Hearing this from Manny, I too was inflicted with a small touch of pride. Manny’s career had started much like mine, and now he seemed to be a living example of the impact that someone dedicated to his work could achieve. I don’t know what I want to do, but I know the kind of person that I am. I feel as though if I were to find myself in a certain career that I don’t particularly enjoy, then I would have to make some grand changes in my life. Speaking with Manny gave me confidence that I would find what I wanted to do in my life, eventually.
The final verdict for my internship: I will be moving throughout the organization on a fairly frequent basis, getting a look at all of the aspects of the Lawyer’s Committee. I will often be working closely with Manny, as he is trying to set up a system of metrics that require the collaboration of many departments throughout the organization as well as an understanding of the financial workings of the organization. And if at anytime I realize what I really want to be doing is something else in the company, Manny has reassured me that I would be able to switch tasks and focus on whatever it is I want to focus on. It figures that he would understand.
