The Nine to Five Day of Policy Wonk Wannabe

Orientation, What happens during the day.

Each day starts with a continental breakfast, surprisingly healthy. They do this to prevent us from filing for expenses. Smart folks, those AAASers. And, the breakfast gives us another chance to network. With 188 others and only ten days, that is a task—Our cohort is almost twice the size of the Senate.

We meet at various locations. We have met at the AAAS headquarters, the Cannon House Office Building (in Caucus Room, 345, that is often the venue of CSPAN hearings}, various hotels and office buildings, part of a plan to get us acquainted with DC, and at the National Press Club. We spend a lot of time walking around the “business” and federal areas of DC. Most of us know that there is no J Street. Some of us know how to determine what the cross street is when given an address. They do not take us on a tour of DC, which I think is a correctable error (next year), which I will note on the evaluation at the end of the orientation. We have an optional picnic on the afternoon of the second Saturday. We could have an optional bus tour of the National Mall, and other nearby highlights, for a couple of hours that same day.

The topics each day vary, but the theme is one of these-- White House, the Executive Departments, or Congress. The speakers! It’s the speakers that we rave about. Not just good speakers with good information, but bringing a lifetime of experience in Washington. Their presentations are very good, but where they really excel is the Q & A. We had a speaker last Friday who was a late substitute for a member of Congress (they are on recess and back home knowing the next election is only 15 months away). She read her talk, it was OK, not great, packed with information on how the Presidency has evolved over two centuries, but it was in her answers to our questions (which ran on for 45 min) that she really showed what she knew and what we wanted to know.

The list of our speakers is astounding—the Historian of the Senate, who has been here since before most of the cohort was born; the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (John Holdren), Henry Aaron, no not THAT one, the economist at the Brookings who is often quoted on All Things Considered. We, geeks that we are, are all envious of our Poli Sci-majoring classmates who are here, in DC, and holding down those policy jobs we yearn for.

More later.