While my internship and experience with the Mayor isn't quite over, one of the other interns who is from Germany has her last day in the office today. She has been one of the best parts about working down at City Hall, because it is so much fun to learn about how things are different in city government and life in general over in Germany. Plus her accent is just so much fun to listen to, and you can't help but fall in love with her cute personality!
Big things have been happening for me this week, the Student Government and City Hall project I was working on hit some major strides. The Senate meeting down here at City Hall is quickly approaching (Less than two weeks YAYAY!!!) and at the start of this week we had no speaker, no budget and lots of the Senators still had no idea what was going on with this really cool opportunity. Now, sitting at the end of the week, we have a speaker, and we have a budget (and a SG Appropriations Bill to match), and most of the senators at least have a vague idea of what's going on. I went to Senate this week as someone's alternate and was able to explain how the evening is going to work and answer people's questions and it was great to see how me answering a few things really made people more comfortable with the whole situation. I also feel much more comfortable because things are falling into place with this whole event. I really really hope I don't hit any more snags, but I know that if I do I will be able to handle it. That's the biggest and best thing I have learned so far, planning early is great and you should absolutely do it when you can, but keeping calm and having a back-up plan in times of seeming crisis is the best skill I could have asked to learn.
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I've been given a new project here, and it involves me calling bars. Working in a political office I never thought I would call a bar and say that I am representing the Mayor. What I am actually doing is setting up the meeting spots for the Mayor's Young Professionals Kitchen Cabinet. So it is a pretty official thing. It's surprising how easy it is to set up a meeting at a bar for like 60 people. As another part of this I am contacting and setting up the speakers.
Doing both of these things together results in one of those puzzles where there are clues and this person can't go here because of this. Let's just say I rocked those things when I was younger. They were my favorite type of brain teaser, and this one was like a real-life brain teaser. There is one speaker who rides his bike everywhere, so I needed to make sure that his speaking location is near his downtown residence. Other speakers lived in neighborhoods further out, so they were assigned to the bars near to their neighborhoods. Finally, some of the locales only have room for a large group like the YPKC during the warmer months when their patios are open. Long puzzle short, I have reserved the locations for both the November and December meetings and am working ahead of most of the restaurants to reserve meetings for 2015. Things are clicking into place and it's so fun to have something that is very much task oriented and a to-do list that I can check off things as I complete them. It's also awesome to have something that is in the local news that is my personal responsibility. We got fresh blood this week. I know that sounds morbid and very much sounding like a bully to say, but it's true. We got a new intern from Mount St. Joe this week. It seems to be perfect timing, because Julia is gone in Chicago with other German interns, and then she leaves to go back to Germany in less than a month.
The only thing that is strange about this new situation, for me, is that I am now the person that is getting all the questions fired at them, instead of me firing questions at Julia (which I'm sure she got tired of very quickly). On Wednesday I had to teach Garrett how to do basically everything I do day to day. It was really easy to see, through him, how overwhelmed I must have been to a (thankfully) very patient Julia. While that is strange it's not a downside, so that makes the only downside the fact that because he is slow and still learning I have to pick up a lot of the slack. Answering the phones is by far the hardest part of the job. People who call in here often call as a last resort and are now frustrated not only with their problem, but also with the multiple offices that have failed them in their pathway to phoning the Mayor's office. There's also the process of referral, which I still don't really know who exactly does what, and I'm still getting calls and cases to the wrong people sometimes. I'll get it eventually, I think. Always a student. M |
AuthorMiranda Hileman is an honors student at the University of Cincinnati embarking on a journey to combat the insanity of working for a public official. Archives
December 2014
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