Thursday/Friday April 15th-16th

On Thursday I went into the assembly members office & they finally had a Login name for me to use the computers! They also gave me an email address, so I feel pretty official. The woman in charge of the internship was finally there after coming back from her vacation, and she seemed pretty overwhelmed with all of the work she had to do, so unfortunately she left me sitting at the computer with nothing to do for an hour. This was the first day that I had to answer the phones. I hung up on 2 people on accident, but I tried to play it off when they asked me about it. Finally, she gave me a task to complete where I had to call about 100 churches to find out their fax or email address in order to send them a flyer about a financial fair that our office is offering. This financial fair actually seemed like a great idea! They were offering to assist the congregants of the churches one on one financial assistance in order to avoid foreclosure and how to manage money. I called the churches, and for the most part I had to leave messages, and repeat a script that was written for me over and over again. Towards the end my mouth became numb, and I felt like saliva was building up in my mouth after non stop repetition. I spent the remainder of the time trying to complete the task, and then begin again the next day.

Friday: I struggled to find a parking spot in downtown Oakland, where I almost ran over a person that stood in front of me while I was driving. That was a bad start to the day. I was about 10 minutes late to the internship but nobody said anything. I met with the internship coordinator and she wanted me to fax and email the flyer to the churches that I had already received contact information from. I think she expected this task to take me a long time, and was really surprised when I finished in about 10 minutes. I used the database in order to email the flyers, the email was written by me, but showed as if it was sent by the assemblymember. So I learned how they do these type of things and see how the 'assemblymember' sends out information. I completed the task of calling all of the churches, and when I told the internship coordinator that I was done she was even more surprised.

SO I want to look into and discuss the inner workings, function, and dysfunction that I've observed during my internship so far.

One thing regarding the churches. I keep on thinking to myself, WHY did we only contact churches for this event, and not the rest of the community. It's interesting to me how politicians work with the churches to get a turnout to their events. Obviously, there is some type of connection between the two entities, and the politicians take this to their advantage.

Everytime I would call one of the churches, I was surprised at how rude the "churchgoing secretary" would be to me. I had to read a script, that I honestly thought made me feel like a telemarketing robot. I kept thinking to myself, this is the strategy that this office uses to get people to attend their events? It seemed SOOO ineffective to me, and it obviously was whenever I would get a response saying, No thanks, nobody will attend this event anyways, and then I would get hung up on. After reading the long and repetitive script, all I had to request from them was an email address of a fax number in order to send them a copy of the flyer for the event, but the script turned them away immediately. It might have been a lot more effective just to straight up say, "Hi do any members of your church have problems managing money, or are in fear of losing their home due to foreclosure, we have an event coming up that can help them with this. Maybe I will let the internship coordinator know my idea, and we can see if any changes will be made, but for the meantime I will let them stick to their ways. haha.

If any of you guys want to write your own script, one that you would think would be effective and engaging, in order for people to come to certain events, FEEL FREE to write it in your comment, because I wanna know!

Also, another think I have learned so far is how they

Day 2/3

Day 2 I tried to dress a little bit more professionally and as I entered the state building I had to walk through the security gates. I forgot that I had a pocket knife in my bag, and that held me up because the security officer had to take it from me to get back later. I went up to the 22nd floor of the building and began to do some more work. I did some more constituent data input, and I did some filing for the office. For some reason everybody seemed frantic but things were moving really slowly, so they had me sitting on the floor figuring out where to put files. Then when the assembly member was coming into the office the secretary told me that I needed to get off of the ground because it wouldn't look too good to see me sitting on the ground. So I got up, finished and left for the day.

After reading the constituent letters and emails that were sent to the office I began to realize the little amount of people that actually know whats going on. I didn't know about all of these bills being passed or the props or anything at all! After reading there letters I saw that the governor of california wants to cut family planning costs, and I didnt even know that. So many people would be affected by those cuts but I only saw about 20 letters from people who opposed the cuts. I realized that people don't have this knowledge available to them, it needs to be put out more.

First Day

So I'm starting this blog to give people an insight into the glamorous world of an internship at a government office.

I began my internship at an assembly member for the state senate on March 18th and I didn't know what to expect. My first impression of the people in the office was cool. A large red headed guy who is in law school directed me to what I should be doing. He seemed really scatter brained but fun at the same time. Even though I'm the youngest in the office I feel that I have more skills that these adults! Really.. Nobody was prepared for me to come in, so they left me with the task of printing labels to paste on red folders for an event being held in Berkeley. That was fun.. Soo then I finished super quick, and everybody else was busy so I ate some free scones in the conference room. I met a couple of more people in the office & I was intimidated at first but that feeling was gone after I finished that scone..

Finally they gave me an important task: with this california budget cut crisis schools and the community I live in is in trouble. So they sent me to google some groups that would be interested in learning more about the budget cuts. I felt important somewhat. So it was time to go & everybody was hectic & running around so I said bye to everybody. Ad I left one of the field reps told me they were excited to have me there but she said " next time no uggs" that was embarassing but I left and was ready for day 2.