Mia Buswell

Turn intellect into action

The Washington Semester program has been the best kind of eye-opener for Mia Buswell. From the super supportive faculty and the amazingly enthusiastic alumni network to a future-changing internship and growing to love life in our nation’s capital, the entire semester has surprised Buswell in so many grand ways.

Mia Buswell - Class of 2025

Major: International Affairs

Minors: Economics, Humanitarian Affairs

Hometown: Sterling, Virginia

High School: Potomac Falls High

Highlights: Cranked her way through a busy internship during daylight hours; shifted gears to do the academic thing at night; figured out how to maneuver a crazy schedule all while residing in Washington, D.C., during her time in the prestigious Washington Semester program, a JMU hallmark.

Q&A With Mia

Describe your Washington Trade Association internship.

My primary responsibility is event planning, so I do a lot of coordinating. I receive email from potential speakers and I make sure they are coordinated with our CEO and managing director so we’re all on the same page in the event planning. I also respond to people who are interested in joining the association, membership renewals and just have a lot of contact with our members. It is giving me a lot of experience in how to be a young professional in an office environment when I’m working with people who are important in the trade industry. It’s a unique experience in that sense.

How will this experience set you apart?

I think this experience working as an intern and as a professional student will set me apart post-graduation because it is giving me experiences to time-manage—the doing of both roles at once. It is a lot of time management having to work 9-5 and then I come home and be a fulltime student. It’s teaching me so much about how to organize my time efficiently and be able to problem-solve.

Are there other benefits from the Washington Semester experience for you?

Getting this experience while I’m still an undergrad is showing me a path for what I want to do, and from here I have two semesters left at James Madison, so I can curate classes toward what I liked and disliked about this internship—what I think I want to do with my career from this.

What’s the most valuable learning for you so far?

One of the most valuable things about this internship is that I learned what I am truly interested in. I’m an International Affairs major and an Economics minor, so I always knew I wanted to go into that general realm, but I never knew I could be interested in trade. If you asked me at the beginning of my college career if I would be doing anything related to trade, I wouldn’t have believed you, but now I’m working hands-on with it every single day and I really like it.

What’s in the near future?

Through this internship, I’m actually going on to work another internship related to trade in the summer, so doing this internship has actually opened a whole lot of doors for me in the trade world. I’ve just gained invaluable experience with a topic I never knew I wanted to be interested in.