Week 9

This week this week... I have less material to work with because I abandoned the District of Columbia in order to return to my homeland. But luckily, the week prior to my Thursday departure was at least stimulating enough to yield a 4 paragraph blog.

Here I am with my brother, Marcus Alan Messamer, and my old friend Mr. Alex Nielsen back in good ol' Oskaloosa, Iowa. I could have taken out the red in my brother's eyes, but I thought it added a little extra evil Halloween glow.


At work this week my principal tasked me with looking up some of her old contacts from Chicago. Unfortunately, she had very few details on the people I was attempting to find. Although misspelled names and incorrect employment background complicate the search, it makes the research a little more fun and detective-like. I had to call a few places to track down some names and that made it more exciting when I actually found them. What a sleuth I am.

The other challenge this week was attempting to schedule meetings with people on the hill, which requires a little more effort than one might expect.

The process goes something like...

Call the congressional office to figure out who deals with the issue you're trying to address...
Write that person an email...
Call the office back when that person doesn't respond to their email...
Leave a message when that person doesn't answer his/her phone...
Try calling back again later...
Feel like a loser for hassling that person so much...
Send a follow-up email....
And so on and so forth.

But then again, that extra effort makes it seem especially rewarding when somebody agrees to schedule an appointment.

I also got to sit in on my first client meeting this week. And I loved it. I'm getting a double degree in political science and marketing, and the client meeting made me realize how much of a marketing feel that lobbying has. Product, price, promotion, place... The 4 P's are all there. I guess lobbying would be seen more specifically as a promotion tactic. It seems that the target market in lobbying would naturally be the government, but that over-simplifies things. Lobbying reaches markets outside government, plus there are so many distinct markets within government. It's nice when you can make connections between things you learn in school with whatever is going on in your life. Makes me feel like I'm getting my money's worth.