After UT Austin freshman Montserrat Rocha learned she didn’t get her dream internship position with the LBJ School of Public Affairs, she was understandably discouraged — but only for a moment.
“I was very sad, because I thought the interview had gone so well,” she says. “But then I was like, I can’t just give up. I have to do something.”
Her next step was so old-school her fellow students often find it unbelievable: She walked across UT campus to the Texas Capitol and began knocking on doors. The first — that of her hometown state representative — was closed. But when Rocha approached the office of state senator Judith Zaffirini, her luck changed. By the next afternoon Rocha was interviewing for a position in Zaffirini’s office, and she soon joined the senator’s staff as a legislative intern.
The speed with which she went from wandering Capitol hallways to working in a senator’s office still surprises Rocha, but in hindsight it’s easy to see how her interests and experiences had prepared her to seize the opportunity when it came.
Growing up in Laredo with a parent on either side of the Rio Grande, Rocha was aware early on of the importance of elected representatives and the impact government policy could have on the lives of everyday people and communities.
“My parents would speak so highly of elected officials, like our U.S. representative and our state senator, who I intern for now,” Rocha remembers. “And they would tell me, ‘When you grow up, you can be one of these officials and help us.’ That’s what first led me to my interest in government.”
While still in high school, Rocha pursued her burgeoning interest in government with an internship at the local courthouse. She also participated in a program that sends students to Washington, D.C.
“That was where I realized I had the passion for public service,” Rocha says. “They taught us how to be civically active, how to advocate for our communities, and how to understand what issues are important to us. Those experiences really built my enthusiasm for the field.”
But once she came to UT Austin as a first-generation student and one of only a handful of students from her high school, Rocha’s confidence wavered. The transition to college-level coursework was sometimes overwhelming, and she struggled to connect with other students.
“I felt really behind and lonely,” Rocha says, looking back on her first semester in Austin. “But then I realized that I had to step it up with my experiences. I’ve always had this mindset of, ‘I need to keep developing myself,’ and I knew I wanted to get another internship that would allow me to keep growing.”
It was that drive that eventually led her to the Capitol, where she spent this spring hard at work learning the ins and outs of the Texas Legislature. In Zaffirini’s office, Rocha met with constituents, assembled binders of reference material for bills under consideration in the Senate, and even drafted some legislative proposals of her own. The pace of the office was often demanding, she says, but successfully working under pressure gradually rebuilt her confidence.
“After knocking on those doors and getting this internship, I’ve felt braver,” Rocha says, and that newfound courage has helped her make more friends and feel more in control of her schoolwork. Her time in the Capitol has also made Rocha think about what kind of elected representative she would like to be one day.
“It’s really critical to know your people, what they value and what they need,” she says. “It’s so easy to become out of touch with constituents and to lose that connection with the people you’re representing. In this internship I’ve learned that, since I want to go into the public service field, I really have to build bonds with the people that I want to represent one day.”
And for her fellow UT Austin students who may feel uncertain or intimidated about pursuing similar opportunities, Rocha has one simple piece of advice: just go for it. “Everyone asks me how I got my internship, and I want students to know that it’s not that hard,” Rocha says. “You just have put yourself out there and not be afraid.”