Week 1: February 4th, 2008

This was my first full work week at the Children’s Rights Council. David Levy, our site supervisor picked me and the 3 other interns that are working there up on Friday after orientation. He drove us up to Maryland and showed us the building so we would know how to get there. He seems like a very nice, dedicated person. We were then able to take the metro back, so we would know how to come to work on Monday. Out of the four interns, three of us live in Arlington at Courthouse and the fourth at Grovsner in Maryland. I am able to meet the other two interns that live in my building in the lobby and we all commute together.
Over the weekend I took time to unpack and settle in. I got to spend some time with my room mates to get to know them. We all went grocery shopping about four times and still didn’t get everything we need for the apartment. I went to school with an intern from last semester that moved up here and she also showed me around Georgetown this weekend.
Monday was a half day at work and was more of an introduction than anything. We don’t start until 9:30 and when everyone gets in the office around 10:00 we have a meeting to go over the projects. Dave gave us a list of projects that CRC is currently working on and we all got to choose which projects we would work on according to what we thought was interesting to us. I thought that was excellent, I was expecting to be given something tedious to do the first few weeks.
Monday night was also my first day of class. I am in the Intro to Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure class with Professor Hardy. He seemed to be a very bright, intellectual person, but also very understanding and down to earth. The class didn’t cover much because it was the first day and no one had books yet. Professor Hardy did give us a brief introduction to the three main reasons for Criminal Law; Reformation, Retribution and Restraint.
Throughout the week at CRC we all jumped right into the projects. I am interested in forensic psychology, especially working with children in the juvenile justice system. There were a few projects I thought would be very interesting and beneficial experiences for my career goals. The first project I started working on is trying to gain support and cosponsors from the House of Representatives for a Joint Custody Resolution (H.Con.Res-241). I looked up the website for the Reps and then had to call and find out what committee the Resolution had been assigned to, the Judiciary Committee. Then I had to call and find out what subcommittee it had been assigned to, the Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security subcommittee. After I found out what subcommittee it was referred to, we called the offices of the House members that were on that subcommittee, and asked what Legislative Assistant (LA) was in charge of that subcommittee, because you don’t deal directly with the House member. We set up three appointments for Friday and six for Monday. Friday was our first day lobbying on Capitol Hill and it was pouring rain outside. We parked about eight blocks away and were all soaked when we got there. Other than the wet start, the day went pretty well. Capitol Hill was a little more casual than I had imagined and the offices were not as large or frightening as I had imagined.