and i don't know how it gets better than this

On Monday, I had my first interview for my independent study project. I met with the Legislative Director in Senator Sessions office, and I ended up getting some good information from him. I'm trying to understand a bit more about public policy, including the policy process. I'm pretty familiar with the whole Schoolhouse Rock, "I'm just a bill, on Capitol Hill" concept, but there's so much more than goes into creating policy (especially in these huge Senate offices).

The one downside I've found is that many congressional offices are hestitant to let staffers appear on camera. For my staff interviews, I'm just going to have to take notes and make kind of a video-journal entry for my project. It's not what I'd orginally wanted to do, but it will just force me to be a little more creative! I'm hoping nongovernmental offices are more lenient.

With the healthcare debate heating up, there are a lot of protests this week. Today we went out to a big healthcare protest by the House offices - it was just mind-blowing. I interviewed several protesters and got some good footage. It was really neat to see these people who had never been politically active out fighting for something they believe in so much. Whether or not you agree with them, it's great to see democracy in action. That's what America is really about.

My big work project for the semester was on Tuesday. I worked 14 hours and then had a midterm the next day - not fun. Everything went pretty well, which I think is usually a suprise with event planning. I've ended up doing a lot more event planning and support than I expected here, actually. This week and next week, I'm mostly going to be working on the followup - thank you letters, evaluations, reports, etc - before jumping into another meeting that will happen in October.

I've only got 5 weeks left here, which is a bit strange. I felt like I was waiting forever to come to D.C. and I was so nervous about this semester, but it really has been a fantastic experience.