This is a picture of the statehouse, taken from a window at the northeast corner of the floor I work on across the street! You'll have to excuse my reflection there in the window. Most states don't actually have such fancy, majestic buildings to house their legislatures, but Ohio is one of the few that have such an impressive-looking statehouse, almost like the buildings in Washington, D.C. The offices of the House of reps are actually in my building across the street and not in the Statehouse itself, but legislators are constantly going back and forth between the two because everything official happens there.
Yesterday I finally moved into the apartment I'll be living in (Last week I was staying in my brother's apartment). Today I am doing research on a few possible bills that representatives might introduce, and I'm reading Ohio's Constitution. My boss spent some time Friday giving me a crash course on some of the materials we use here, on the Ohio Revised Code (which is just the name for all our laws), and other important things about the state government.
It is a very quiet day here, but I'm getting some good research done.
So far, so good!
What is the video about, exactly? I couldn't get it to play.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds awesome, like you're in the middle of all the action. It's great that you get to contribute to all the research. You probably can't say much because of confidentiality, but I'd love to hear a few more specifics about what sorts of things you're doing in Columbus! Have you met Armond Budish yet?
Out of curiosity - is your project affecting your thinking about college majors at all? I know we talked about this before a bit. Personally, I'm finding myself really interested in Yale's cognitive science major, which is kind of interdisciplinary and involves psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy - there's even a "music cognition" course...
I'm not really sure about the video! I don't know what that is, it was unintentional. x_x
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm already interested in going into politics, but it might slightly affect what I want to focus on as far as fields that might lead me to politics. Tons of people go into political science, but I think that has a lot to do with how to get elected, and less of how to actually be a good legislator or executive once you get there. I had a great conversation with somebody who told me that the problem is that not enough people elected to a public office actually know how to govern. Hopefully you get what I'm saying... it's kind-of hard to explain. But coming up with actual solutions to America's problems requires lots of knowledge about economics, about policy, etc. Not just knowledge about "politics," because knowing how to get what you want as a politician isn't very helpful if you don't actually know what you want. So I might study a little more policy and a little less politics, or mix them together. We shall see!
I think I do pretty much understand. Basically, if everyone in Congress had a degree in economics, would we have a $14 trillion deficit right now?...probably not.
ReplyDeleteWell, I hope you're really enjoying project!