This summer, I was lucky enough to intern in Washington, D.C. for Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, my hometown representative from California’s Bay Area. 

It wasn’t my first time interning for a member of Congress; I did work for a senator last summer, but in her San Francisco office. I knew what to expect as an intern, but not what to expect out of D.C. I went in armed with several blazers, a C-SPAN addiction and two seasons of House of Cards under my belt.

A quick disclosure: Because of the nature of my internship, I heard, saw and worked on a lot of things that are either still active legislation that is being debated and voted on or just can’t really be shared until after the 2014 midterms and beyond. One thing I can share? Paul Ryan is, in fact, gorgeous enough that I started questioning my belief in the social safety net and a woman’s right to choose. 

But something was nagging at me all summer.

Thanks to House of Cards, my parents thought that living and working in D.C. would make me a cynical, ruthless person. I wasn’t so worried. After all, I’m already about as jaded as a white liberal elite girl can be. How on Earth could I become more pessimistic about the state of our highly dysfunctional political system?

Much as I loved working on the Hill, I’ve realized I am more cynical, more suspicious, more partisan—the exact opposite of what I thought and hoped would happen. That makes me nervous, especially since this is what I plan on doing for the rest of my life. I want to be a staffer, a wonk, to help write policy and work for elected officials.

The thing is, even if you try, it’s just so hard to avoid the toxic culture of hyper-partisanship and frustration that Congress produces. Anything, even the most uncontroversial bill with wide bipartisan support, like legislation to help veterans pay off student loans, can suddenly get shut down over petty debate. Somehow, legislation can become a battle about how something as uncontroversial as expanding research for vector-based diseases is government overreach. The things that need to be addressed get kicked down the road. Brinksmanship, not bipartisanship, is seen as more important. Even when I stood by my party decrying the lack of humanity being shown to teenage migrants, I couldn’t help but wonder if mocking the other side was the most productive way to spend the last day of a Congressional session.

And it’s impossible to escape. I went to a briefing on domestic human trafficking, an issue that you think everyone would want to combat, and the questions become vitriolic: Republicans attacking Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender youth, Democrats claiming the Republicans are against victims of human trafficking. I went to supposedly non-partisan intern lectures and had to sit through people on both sides of the aisle demonizing the other party when the speakers explicitly say they won’t answer political questions. Without realizing it, you become part of that culture. You get annoyed when members of the other party want to sign onto a bill or letter your boss is working on. You roll your eyes and doodle on a notepad, only feigning interest when a constituent calls in with legitimate concerns. You don’t care that your boss is an outlier in that she reads and hand-signs every single thing that leaves the office. 

It’s just the way the world is, and you try not to think about it too much on the weekends or when you are at home.

It’s scary, realizing you’ve found the one thing that makes you tick and that it is going to make you a horrible person, the very sort of person you are afraid of becoming. It scares me to know that after only two months at this, I’m already on the road to becoming the worst part of Washington, the cynical insider who has no faith in the system and will do anything to tear down the other side. And what scares me even more is that it took me such a long time, nearly the whole summer to realize it.

This isn’t what I want with my career. I want to be part of a system that works, that does its job, that doesn’t get approval ratings lower than an Adam Sandler comedy. I believe in helping the American people, and I believe I can help the American people by serving my country through policy.

But the reality is that it is seemingly impossible with the current state of political discourse to achieve these goals. And partisan gridlock is a problem for which I honestly have no fix.

It’s almost enough to make me reconsider what I love. Almost.