Thursday, September 6, 2007

So, the last two days have been much more interesting than the first, although we continued to sit through our fair share of strange lectures, such as what larceny is and how not to commit it, what not to bring through security (they confiscate at least one pair of handcuffs a week...) and how to sign up for 401ks. We've also had some interesting info sessions on things like the city charter and the structure of NYC government. Oh, and today we got to take a tour of City Hall! That was exciting. We got to see the 'bullpen' where the mayor works (he shares his office with his entire staff, and shares a cubicle in the middle of things), although I felt like a third-grader on a field trip, and the "Blue Room" where the televised press conferences are held. We even briefly shared the plaza in front of the City Hall with the mayor as he posed for a picture with some people in hardhats.

BTW, working in politics is not going to be good for me with the whole problem recognizing people thing. I have a feeling I'm going to end up embarrassing myself when I don't recognize someone I should...

Anyway, we had to read the list of over 60 potential placements and pick out at least our top 20. For those placements with many interested Fellows, they schedule group interviews, which seem to be more like info sessions, and then some Fellows will follow up if they are still interested. Tomorrow starts the group interview process, which I think will be a good way to ease into the interviews. It seems we will all be running around like crazy from interview to interview. Unfortunately, I can't say too much about the potential positions, but there are some that sound really cool. I was at least somewhat interested in about half of them, but narrowed my list down to 23. Of those, there are about 5 that I am super excited about. Part of the point of the program is to get a lot of interview experience and exposure to the different city agencies and people, so they encourage us to do as many as we can. To start things off, I have three tomorrow.

In the meantime, I will leave you with some fun facts I've learned about New York City in the past few days:
  • In the 1840s, herds of pigs roamed Wall Street to consume debris as part of the city's early sanitation efforts
  • Speaking of Wall Street, it is so named because it was built in place of the original Dutch wall, built for protection, that was torn down to allow northern expansion
  • NYC has 12,75o miles of sidewalk (enough to stretch halfway around the world) and 6,400 miles of streets

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