Sunday, June 5, 2022
By:
Hi y’all!
It’s a genuine pleasure to be a part of the SPS Summer Internship Program this summer. I first heard about this program from Dr. Brad Conrad himself when he graciously agreed to speak at my SPS chapter’s interest meeting in Fall 2020. I knew immediately that I wanted to be a part of this program, because as much as I love physics, I am never satisfied being confined to a single focus area. The SPS Internship Program offers opportunities for physics students to explore all of the different paths a physics education can lead to, not just research. As an SPS intern this summer, my mind is officially outside the box.
I am particularly excited to one of the AIP Mather Policy interns on Capitol Hill this summer. I am working in the office of Congressman Bill Foster (IL-11), who represents parts of southwest Chicago. Congressman Foster is also the only Ph.D. physicist in Congress. My internship this summer with be just like any other intern in any other Congressional office (except more awesome). My responsibilities will include answering constituent phone calls and letters, writing briefs on legislation Congressman Foster has been asked to sponsor, gathering the important news from the past day, giving constituent tours of the Capitol, and generally being a worker bee making everyone else’s lives easier.
I don’t have much content to report this week, since I was mostly getting set up in the office. I was hopeful that I would finally have a summer free of troubleshooting tech issues, but apparently that’s ubiquitous to every field, not just physics. Apart from my very important, very official email address I was assigned as an employee of the United States government spelling my name wrong, I also had to figure out how to access ethics trainings on a new laptop and an uncooperative WiFi network. Worst of all, I have to do it all on MICROSOFT OFFICE (insert disgust emoji). Long story short, I am not yet a fully ethical person. Hopefully I will be able to report back in my next blog post that I am, at long last, a good enough person to work in Congress.
I did get to do two very exciting things that are related to the Congressional office: press clips and a constituent letter. “Press clips” is exactly what it sounds like: I compile the important news from the day (particularly anything that mentions Congressman Foster) into a giant Google Doc to be sent to everybody in the office. The press clips are, believe it or not, mostly local news from the 11th Congressional District of Illinois. I did the press clips for Friday, as I will for the remainder of the summer. It doesn’t sound like much, but I’m told the Congressman reads them at least some of the time, and I am going to choose to believe that. It feels much more exciting that way. I was also tasked with responding to a letter from a constituent concerned about H.R. 3755, the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would in effect codify in law the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. I’m still not sure yet how much I care share in this blog, so I won’t go into too much detail just yet, but in short, it’s my job to articulate Congressman Foster’s positions as best I can. That letter is then approved (or not) by Congressman Foster and his closest aides. We respond to every constituent letter that reaches our office. So, the lesson here is, write to your Congressperson(s), they (probably through an intermediary or two) are listening.
That was it! I imagine my next blog post will be much more interesting, but if it isn’t, well I’ll have learned something from that too. If you’re interested in learning more about me, feel free to read my bio here at SPS. See you, dear abstract reader, next week!
Aidan Keaveney