THE FUTURE...or something like that

I met today with John Fitzpatrick, the director of the SUNY Washington Semester program. That kind of makes it sound like it was a one-on-one thing, which it was not. He came to Rankin's class today and I spoke with him briefly about what I wanted to do and when, he gave his presentation, left, Rankin lectured for the rest of the class, said Fitzpatrick would be meeting with interested students in the PoliSci Reading Room at 2pm. I was there at the appointed time, which meant that I was unfortunately not in my Contemporary Novel class with the beloved Dr. Stinson.

There were four others that came to the meeting, where he went over some of the relevant details of the program. He feels that a House internship would be more valuable and perhaps more rewarding than a Senate internship, apparently because there is more diversity in the daily tasks that you may be expected to take on. The internship in any case would be four days full time and then a class generally on each Friday, with some exceptions. Housing would be in suburban Alexandria, Virginia, from whence I would take a train each day into DC for approximately 30 minutes. The apartment complex would be roughly the same as SUNY Brockport dorm costs, which is to say ~$2250, and that would cover rent, utilities, et cetera. He estimated food costs to be about $75-100/week. Tuition works out to be Fredonia's cost plus almost 800 bucks as a fee to the program itself.

There's a possibility of getting out of library/tech fees at Fredonia, since I'll be gone. I may receive more financial aid or I may not. I'm not sure if it's a good idea for me to take out yet another loan. I'll be receiving a little over $4800 in aid already scheduled, plus I think about 1500 through Pell. I'm already about 18K in debt as it is. I probably will not be looking for work down there, since I anticipate being too busy.

There's a 20-page paper to be written, and an hour-long presentation to be given, as well as a 10-page general response to the experience. Fitzpatrick made sure to assert that the interns do "real work" that does not consist merely of using the Xerox or the Mr. Coffee machines. He cited several examples and also made sure to mention that some SUNY students seem to have some doubts as to whether or not they can really compete with the networking and placement of Ivy League students (huh...I wonder where they would get the idea that those people have some advantage...?). He claims that there is sigificant demand among many agencies specifically for SUNY interns through the program based on the performance of past program alumni. I guess I'll believe that when I see it.

He has not seen my application as of yet, so there is still no firm progress on whether I'll actually be down there or not. He did say something to the effect that the chances are far higher of landing in the Higgins office (27th District, NYS) than of Clinton's or Schumer's, which is pretty much what I expected.

Other than all that...

I had two broomball games, one Monday night at midnight and one Tuesday night at 1:15. Our team was victorious in both contests, both by shutouts. Monday's game was a little physical. A few kids were somewhat belligerent. One in particular was having trouble maintaining his footing near our bench late in the game. I placed a hand on his hip and gave him just a slight turn and he went down rather more quickly than he might have otherwise. I felt a twinge of remorse, but not too much, since he had been a dick earlier.

Next week, we have two games.

Election night was a bust, at least locally. The Dems lost all three county-wide races. This seems simply to prove that Chautauqua County is a backwoods conservative bastion in a state known nationally as a Democratic stronghold (although this is obviously due to NYC and the like).

New Jersey and Virginia elected Democratic governors (the major races), so that was good.

Alright. The library is closing. Bye for now.