I worked at John Tierney's office on Tuesday and Wednesday, for a total of about 12 hours I believe. I actually got in a car crash unfortunately on my way to work on Tuesday, so I was a bit late that day.
However, literally all I did the entire time was help clean the office. The other people who worked for Tierney had found closed cases that they had long stored away when they were cleaning, and the secretary (Claudia) gave them to me to file. I would record them in the computer (the name of the person with the request, the issue, and the date it was resolved/closed) and then bring them to the basement to file them in that year's box. There were literally hundreds of cases for each year. I did that for all cases closed prior to 2009. For the ones closed in 2008, I placed them upstairs in a file so they're closer to everyone, because it's more likely they'll need those for reference than the older ones.
They literally have hard files back to the late 1990s downstairs in case the case isn't accessible through the computer, it's amazing how much information is down in the basement. They clear the cases after 6 years (so the ones closed in 2009 will be gotten rid of in 2014).
The two new things I did were cleaning up the newspaper files and logging into Tierney's District Office website with a confidential username and password. The newspaper files were all messed up and looking really bad, so I just organized them. They get daily newspapers from literally every newspaper in the county to see when Tierney's name or the Federal Government is mentioned. And then they store the newspapers if they need to come back to them. I got rid of the newspapers prior to April (they only keep them for one month) and stacked them up in a nice, clean way. I also got to look at a more compact way to navigate around what's going on in DC (the bills being debated, passed, and their specifics) by logging in with the help of the secretary. It has literally all the information one could ever need in there, it's quite interesting. I wish it was available to the general public, I don't believe there were any real secrets in there at all.
It was kind of boring these past two days, but Claudia mentioned that I may answer phones soon, so hopefully it'll get more interesting
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
April 14, 2010
Today, I worked my second day at Congressman John Tierney's (D-MA) local office. I worked from 11:00 AM until 6:00 PM. I had two AP classes in the morning.
I had one new assignment today. One of the people working there had me order, both chronologically and alphabetically, all of the letters of support for various things that Congressman Tierney had signed since approximately 1998. There were, I estimate, about 150 of these personal letters, and this took me about two hours. While I am not allowed to discuss the specifics of what I was filing, I believe I am allowed to say that they varied from letters of recommendation to letters simply supporting the allocation of funds to local public works projects.
I then finished the job that I was doing last week. Some of the cases that I was originally filing were from years before 2008, so I had to add them to the computer list (with the first and last names, issue, and case closed), and then put them in a box alphabetically and file them in the basement. There were dozens of boxes from issues going all the way back to 2002 downstairs, which amazes me. They said they can't keep them in their computer database because, since they represent a political figure, they get a lot of spam and things that shut down their networks.
That's about all I did today, it was generally boring, but I did go get lunch with the District Director and was told I'll be hopefully going out with the Congressman soon.
I had one new assignment today. One of the people working there had me order, both chronologically and alphabetically, all of the letters of support for various things that Congressman Tierney had signed since approximately 1998. There were, I estimate, about 150 of these personal letters, and this took me about two hours. While I am not allowed to discuss the specifics of what I was filing, I believe I am allowed to say that they varied from letters of recommendation to letters simply supporting the allocation of funds to local public works projects.
I then finished the job that I was doing last week. Some of the cases that I was originally filing were from years before 2008, so I had to add them to the computer list (with the first and last names, issue, and case closed), and then put them in a box alphabetically and file them in the basement. There were dozens of boxes from issues going all the way back to 2002 downstairs, which amazes me. They said they can't keep them in their computer database because, since they represent a political figure, they get a lot of spam and things that shut down their networks.
That's about all I did today, it was generally boring, but I did go get lunch with the District Director and was told I'll be hopefully going out with the Congressman soon.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
April 9, 2010
Today, I worked my first day at Congressman John Tierney's (D-MA) local office. I worked from 9:00-10:45 and 3:00-6:00 (I had class from 11:09-2:15).
I was first introduced around the office and met almost everyone who works there (some of them were not in the office at the time because they were with Tierney in Amesbury, where he was meeting with some local companies). It struck me that there was probably only one male working there out of the dozen or so people who do. Here's a list of what I did that day:
I was first introduced around the office and met almost everyone who works there (some of them were not in the office at the time because they were with Tierney in Amesbury, where he was meeting with some local companies). It struck me that there was probably only one male working there out of the dozen or so people who do. Here's a list of what I did that day:
- At the office, they have dozens of daily newspapers from the towns in his Congressional District. I sat down and underlined/highlighted about 4-5 newspapers with articles that pertained to the Federal Government becoming involved. All of the articles I highlighted (and continued to copy and store in a folder) had to do with the March floods that our county had. FEMA and other organizations were coming to Essex County to help give out supplies.
- I then was assigned to filing numerous the complaints and requests that Tierney's office had in 2008 in alphabetic order. I put them into boxes (3 in total) so that they could move the files to storage downstairs and proceed to put the 2009 complaints and requests in the same place where the 2008 ones used to be (so that they are easier to access). I finished this at 10:45 (A-Z) and then went to school
- I got back around 3:00 PM, and they let me park in their parking lot so I didn't have to pay to park on the street. I then started to alphabetically order the cases on an Excel Spreadsheet. I had to do every single one of them (I only had time for A-C) and include both their first and last names, the Issue (ie. IRS or Immigration), and the date the case was closed (the last time somebody worked on it). I worked on that for the final 3 or so hours.
I also met Congressman Tierney briefly. He grew up in Salem and was a much bigger person than I'd have expected. He was nice, as I really didn't expect him to take even a few seconds out of his daily life (he had a schedule from 7:30 AM until 10 PM that day) to converse with an intern.
The people also vented from time to time about the obviously inept constituents that called up from time to time. They'd get very angry for no apparent reason on the phone. Obviously, tensions do run high, but for a lot of the conversations, there was no point in them complaining so much about random stuff. I can't discuss the specifics, but there were some interesting things going on that I've obviously never seen.
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