Here We Go

I've officially started, and it's as exciting as I imagined.

The city: hard on the shins - lots of concrete and brick. Pedestrian signals countdown the seconds, so you know if you have enough time to dash across these wide streets. Am learning new routes every day - mostly not intentionally, but that's okay. Many folks that you pass on the streets wear headphones or earpieces, often seeming to talk to themselves - hard to get used to.

So much to see and do - how do residents find time to actually work? Have visited the National Gallery of Art (that's NGA in D.C.-speak) for two wonderful exhibits (Hopper and Turner), the Corcoran (Ansel Adams and Annie Liebowitz), the Renwick Gallery (one of my favorites - small, free, whimsical), the Museum of Natural History (Nature's Best photography exhibit), Air and Space museum (lot's of cool stuff!) and just walking around, seeing the buildings I've either written to or heard of (Heldref Publishing, for whom I review manuscripts for the Journal of American College Health), the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the White House (of course), etc, etc.

Oh yes, the fellowship experience. The Brookings Institution is "fostering" me for this APHA fellowship, apparently along with the NASA fellows, too. There are Brookings LEGIS fellows from EPA, DOD, and Boeing (I'm already slipping into fed-speak with acronyms). It's the end of day two, and it's been fascinating. We've heard from consultants and scholars about the legislative process and state of Congress (Ilona Nickels, Jim Thurber, Thomas Mann), a former Congressman (Charlie Stenholm from Texas, my first blue dog Democrat, an increasingly important breed), and past Congressional committee and personal office staff (Mark Lowenthal, Stephanie Vance, Larry Halloran, Diedra Henry-Spires). All extremely helpful.

My head is spinning with the options and emotional pendulum about Congress - it's a great time to work there, it's a partisan time to work there and not much gets done, the numbers aren't there for either party to carry out its programs, it's a distracting election year, it will be very exciting...Yikes! I imagine that only time will tell. The biggest decision now is what type of office to work in.

The options: a congressional committee, where you spend time preparing hearings and working on bills - depth, no constituent work, good teamwork [I heard that the Senate HELP Committee(that's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions for those of you outside the beltway) is looking for a fellow, in fact].

There's a Senate personal office - more depth but a narrower portfolio" (different issues that you're responsible for) and likely working as a legislative assistant, larger offices with more staff - 1/3 of the Senate is running for office again, but I can check to see how "safe" (~ >55% vote) a seat is.

And the third option is a House personal office - little depth but many different issues to be responsible for, more potential contact with the "member," much smaller offices - often not even room for an extra desk. And all of the House seats are up for re-election, so I imagine that even more staff time in a Representative's office will be devoted to constituent issues this year.

The 110th Congress directory and the Almanac of American Politics are our bibles, as they have lots of interesting information about who's who, where they work, how much seniority they have, and what issues they're interested in (in addition to each member website, of course, which unfortunately vary widely in quality).

I started this experience leaning toward working in a Senate office (thinking it would have more substance, a national perspective, and perhaps even more prestige), but now I'm waivering - there's more of a range of issues in a House office = more stimulating? I keep changing my mind, depending upon who I talked with most recently.

Our task now is to prepare a short resume and cover letter for next week, when we seek interviews in the offices that we're interested in - right now my list includes 9 senators and 7 representatives. But that could change in five minutes.

So far the training is fascinating, the fellow fellows very impressive, and there's no where else I could imagine being.

Lots to learn (both for the fellowship and learning my way around a new city) - and the process of finding the right assignment is emotionally tiring. While I've confidence that it will work out, I'm also ready to have it decided...

On the other hand, the super fixed the garbage disposal and my husband, Tom, sent me flowers, so life is good.

Time to watch the Iowa caucuses and see how that turns out...