Starting Week 3 in the House of Reps

Hellooooooooooo.  Not too much to talk about today detail-wise so I'll just ramble about things in general.  I'm getting to know my roommates a little better, and making all my own food and living on my own is pretty cool.  I definitely think I'm ready for college in that sense.  I'm researching some of the same things I was working on last week... My boss and I sat at a desk together for a couple hours today editing some things and putting them together so that they'll be ready for the caucus in coming weeks.  It seems to me that as time goes on my boss is starting to get a better idea of what types of things I can be useful for, and now that I've been here for a couple weeks I think I'm getting a little more work to do and building more of a base of confidence, in a way.  It's entirely possible that he was confident in my abilities from the start, but I have a feeling he tested the waters a little bit to see what I'm capable of before letting me get too involved in any projects.  I'm pretty sure I passed. 

I've been learning a lot about a range of things, from the ins and outs of state government to the concepts and details about some real issues being discussed these days in the political sphere.  I'm learning a lot about how the budget works, what types of issues tend to be party-line and which ones have some crossover. I'm starting to hear a lot about how redistricting and reapportionment is going to work in the next few months, and the list goes on.  Before project I already felt like somewhat of a political buff (for my age, at least), but now I feel even more capable and prepared to speak intelligently on topics of interest or be involved in other political endeavors, based on the experiences I'm having here.  It's just pretty cool to be right in the middle of things.  And I feel pretty awesome about the fact that I read Ohio's Constitution (minus a few huge articles like Public Debt and Public Works...) and I liked it.  A friend of mine thinks it's endearingly dorky, but I think it's really cool!  I don't know too many people who have actually taken the time to read the constitution [which isn't even too long if you skip some of the huge amendments about money allocation and other topics of that nature], but understanding the guidelines that govern our state at the most fundamental level makes me feel more connected to Ohio, and to the USA.  I'm pretty proud of it.  Now I think that at some point I should probably read the US Constitution in its entirety... Maybe I'll take a day or two and do that this summer.