Sunday, June 4, 2023
By:
Hey everyone! My name is Ruthie, and I’m the Mather Science Policy intern this summer. I’m working for the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (or the Science Committee for short), for the democratic staff.
As the summer goes on, I’ll try to find my own style for both content and the kind of information I include in my blogs, but it’ll be a little bit of a learning curve for me right now. I’ve kept a daily photojournal for the past eight years, but to me, it still feels a little different from this weekly chronicle. Like my photojournal though, I’ll do my best to include lots of my personality, cool pictures I’ve taken, and emotional highlights instead of just going through the things I physically did. This week is a bit long, but everything was so new and felt so important that I felt like I needed to share it all.
To start with what happened though: we all moved in on Sunday, and I took the day to unpack my stuff, and meet my roommate, MJ! We did a small grocery shopping trip and made dinner together, which was a really sweet way to start off the summer. We quickly realized that we didn’t have shower curtains though, and headed to target the next morning to pick some up. Monday was also Hannah’s birthday, and so I grabbed a birthday card while we were at the store, and people came over to sign it throughout the afternoon. Around 6:30, we all went out to dinner together! It was really nice, and so good to meet everyone before we had to be official. I’ve rarely fit in so well with a group before – maybe it was something about the way we were all coming together with something in common, and maybe it’s just that physics always attracts good people, but I enjoyed every minute of it. When we got back to our building, people didn’t seem ready to split up just yet, so we all met up in someone’s room and played a fun game that presented each person with a philosophical dilemma. There was as much talking about the game as there was just general conversation, and it was fairly late before we knew it and we all said goodnight so we could head to ACP the next morning.
We all met downstairs at 7:30, but the highlight was 100% this: we were taking headshots during orientation, and so we had to be wearing business professional attire. Which meant that we were a troupe of physics nerds wearing suits walking like the Avengers to the metro and from the metro to ACP. I must be completely honest – I’ve gotten so many emails from Brad, the head of the Society of Physics Students, and probably disregarded most of them, but I can tell you that after meeting him in person I don’t think I’ll be doing that again. He’s one of the most genuine and caring people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, and the same applies to Kayla and Mikayla as well. Though some of the orientation material itself was a little boring, one theme ran throughout it all. Everyone at AIP/SPS/APS (who even knows) who touches this internship cares so much about each and every one of us and want to do everything they can to help us succeed. I’ve really had to fight for a lot of my past experience, and I feel so privileged to have all of them with me.
My other highlight of Tuesday was watching the sunset at the Watergate steps, overlooking the Potomac river and into Virginia. It really hit home that we were right in the middle of DC, and it was really up to me whether or not I took advantage of that. I want to do my best to explore this city!
Technical difficulties were another theme for Tuesday and Wednesday. Many people, myself included, had issues with accounts or computers, which meant that I put on my “professional adult who is going to congress” outfit and went to congress (or the Ford Office Building), where the Minority staff for the Committee for Science, Space, and Technology is currently housed, and was there for… about an hour and a half. My badge, account, and computer weren’t ready so I just went home. Brynn and I used the time to go to the farmer's market right by the metro station, which was adorable! I made a yummy dinner though, and we all hung out together near the Washington Monument which was lovely :)
Thursday was not to disappoint. I got in at 9 (full work day woo) and got my HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES EMAIL ADDRESS SET UP which was WILD. The interns sit at the front desk for the office, and so I got to meet all the professional staff for the office, along with some of the other interns (I have home interns and work interns which is really confusing for my family) and once they found out that I was a physics major, I was informed that there was a briefing on quantum mechanics at 11:00 and I should go to it.
So I did.
It was fascinating to me to see quantum explained to Legislative Aids for members of Congress instead of in the way it was taught to my physics class, heavy with math and light on applications. It was wild to me to imagine that I came into that room with more experience of quantum than most of the other people there, but I was fairly certain it was true. That briefing was in a different House office building closer to the Capitol, and on my way back I walked through a small section of the US Botanical Gardens and ate lunch. I sent one of the most excited voice notes I’ve ever sent to my best friend, freaking out that this was real and I was doing Science Policy! I was in the thick of it! But little did I know.
When I got back from lunch, I took notes on a Senate Meeting that had happened the previous day so that members of the committee could review them. Then, Alan and Dahlia, two of the Committee staffers most involved with the Quantum hearing happening the next Wednesday (which is why there was a Quantum briefing) asked me to sit in on a meeting where they met with the Republican staffers and edited the bill that would be the subject of the hearing. This is where the real legislation happens. And I got to witness it. For context, the National Quantum Initiative Act, which was passed in 2018, is now going to expire, and Congress wants to reauthorize it. I definitely felt like I was thrown into the deep end, but I was loving it.
Friday, however, really started off with major impostor syndrome. Alan asked me to write questions for the hearing. Each hearing has witnesses, and members of the committee ask the witnesses questions to try and get more information on the subject that they’re trying to create legislation on. But the congress people don’t write their own questions, and they don’t write the bills themselves. It’s the people in the committees they’re a part of, like Dahlia and Alan and my immediate boss who do. And today, it turned out, it was me. I felt so in over my head, like I couldn’t possibly write questions for lawmakers to use as just a 22-year-old intern. I sent my first question to Alan, and I thought he was going to laugh at it. But instead, he thanked me, and gave me constructive feedback on what parts of what I wrote were good and which needed improvement. It really hit me at that moment that I wasn’t expected to already know how to do this, I wasn’t expected to be perfect because I was a beginner. And because I was a beginner, I was being helped and supported along the way so that I could help others. The second question I wrote was better, and a lot of that was because I felt like I wouldn’t be punished for failure. I was going to be helped until I succeeded.
I think that’s a memory that I’m going to take with me for a long time. I hope that in the future, I can be a person who helps others feel comfortable with the skill level they’re at and help them recognize that learning is a part of gaining any new skill. It’s ok to not know what you’re doing – you just have to be willing to learn.
Ruthie Vogel