Stuffed with snapper and sirloin, I took a welcome break from the Free Food-A-Thon to celebrate the latest development in the fight to make college more affordable with five senators outside the Capitol.

Luke Swarthout of the U.S. PIRGs thanks the senators behind him (from left: Sherrod Brown looking a bit distracted; Jeff Bingaman; Bernie Sanders feeling the heat; Gabe Pendas, not a senator; and Ted Kennedy looking like a proud grandpappy. Patty Murray didn’t make it into this picture, but she was there and gave my favorite speech of the day.) for their hard work to make college more affordable. Young activists like Luke, Gabe and Pedro de la Torre deserve just as much thanks.

Kennedy’s words about how loan forgiveness helps students after college made me think about how dessert might help me after lunch. I strolled from the Russell Senate Building to the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum for a “Women’s Rights; Women’s Voices” intern lunch. I was eager to honor the anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1847 and “discuss feminist issues from suffrage to equal rights to what it means to be an empowered woman today.”

The only problem, my friend who’s interning at Emily’s List reminded me, was that I was a not a young woman and this was a networking event for young women. I contemplated changing into drag, but decided I'd keep that side of me locked up until the weekend. Plus, with all that humidity, my make-up would cake up and weave would frizz in no time, girl.

Not to be deterred by my masculine garb, I walked into the beautiful museum in search of some delectable dessert. To my dismay, I found myself standing alone in a hallway with busts of Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul. I began to poke around for signs of intern life but was intercepted by a docent who seemed determined to derail my quest for dessert. She could not help me with my pursuit of pastries, but she gave a great breakdown of how the women’s rights movement developed in America.

I left disappointedly dessertless but with the suspicion that that wouldn’t be my last time in Sewall-Belmont House for the day…