Peanuts

Kennedy Center, lots of museums, Independence Day, and plenty of shenanigans. I don't even know where to begin!

I think I would rather write about the ridiculous things. They give you a better glimpse into my life.

Let's start with peanuts. In an empty Environmental Education office, there were huge bags of peanuts. The peanuts were set to expire soon (apparently they expire? Reminds me of my favorite Seinfeld standup), so someone sent out a message to the office asking if the peanuts belonged to anyone; if not, they would be donated to the federal food drive going on right now. This is a real email received in return: The peanuts are there because this office has a long standing tradition of feeding the squirrels outside our windows. Janice usually does the peanut drop, but I will sometimes do it if she is not here. Janice and former members of this office buy the peanuts for this purpose. Excuse me, WHAT?! That is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read in my ENTIRE life. A PEANUT DROP?! For SQUIRRELS?! This is even more absurd than the treatment of the Duke squirrels. Honestly, my time here has exposed a series of inefficiencies in the Federal government, but oh my goodness this is just a whole new level of crazy. Obviously jokes about peanuts are now even more popular than ones about being blessed. Look at your life, look at your choices people. 


Speaking of federal inefficiency, I'm going to take this moment to have a discussion with myself about my future in government. On the one hand, I don't think I can work in government forever. Things just take too long to get done, and so many of the career staff lack passion. They are complacent moving at a really slow pace, with antiquated methods, because there is no incentive to get it done faster. My parents were down here this weekend, and they asked if anyone would be in the office on Saturday. I scoffed at such a ridiculous notion. There are advantages to being in the office on a Saturday in the private sector; be more productive and you can both earn more and move up the promotion ladder faster. In the federal government, everyone is salaried, and there is a rigid pay scale that has extremely few exceptions for rapid upward movement for merit. Plus there is no funding to improve the infrastructure, and there are no venture capitalists betting on the government of the United States.

But on the other hand, maybe federal work should be slow. The rules for creation regulations at the EPA are extremely tedious and time consuming. But maybe that's how it should be! If they were rapid fire, like the private sector, then one crazy administration could rapidly usher in the complete removal of environmental protection. Constitutional amendments and overrides are extremely hard to pass for a reason--our government shouldn't be susceptible to incredibly rapid flux. Furthermore, while the slow rate of action is frustrating, the impact is incredible. If I want to really be a player in environmental policy, there are few places better than the EPA in terms of making a real difference. And there are SO many programs within the EPA, the scope is unbelievable; Obviously EPA has a stake in every major environmental issue, but who knew it administered programs like EnergyStar? And I had no idea how much public health work they do (radon, mercury and air toxics, UV/sunburn, the list goes on and on) Plus it is remarkably easy to move between programs. Few nonprofits or private enterprises could offer that flexibility of experience.

This summer has both stoked and diminished my cynicism about government. In the end though, I think I will definitely at least consider and apply to federal jobs after college. And after our "How to Prepare a Federal Resume" workshop today, I will probably need to get cracking on USA Jobs soon!

I'll tackle the fun stuff mentioned at the start of this post in my next one because this one already feels excessively long.