Or, more accurately, a Library of Congress kind of day, seeing as how every day is a library kind of day for me. I slept over at my aunt and uncle's house (we had fun when I was living there after the burglary, and it's just easier to stay over when I go there for dinner ) and dragged myself out of bed at an ungodly hour (7:15) the next morning. Libraries and librarians keep non-standard working hours (as you may imagine), and I generally use that to my advantage and swing in sometime between 10 and 11. Lest you think I'm lazy, that also means that I'm always there at least until 6, frequently until after 7. I prefer that schedule--it suits me and my nocturnal ways. So, long story short, anything before 8:30 is "ungodly early" in my book.
Why this cruel turn of events? I had to go to a training at the Congressional Research Service, in the Madison building of the Library of Congress. CRS runs all sorts of classes on Congress for congressional staff. I noticed that a 7 week series--Advanced Legislative Processes Institute--was coming up. It's a good program, and you get a certificate after it, and the fact that you've taken it goes in your personnel file, and for someone who would like to stay working on the Hill or in a related library environment, it's a good idea to take it. Legislative process and procedures are really quite complex. I know that most folks know this, but I still feel the need to say that it's not all School House Rock. I know the "basics", (which is actually pretty detailed for non-legal/legislative types) but the really advanced stuff is difficult to me, and quite confusing. So, not only to I want to show I've taken this course, I really do want to know the stuff.
Unfortunately, CRS requires you to be invited to take the Advanced course, and a prerequisite to being invited is to take "Congress: an Introduction to Resources and Procedure". From 9am to 3:30 pm. Now, I will say that it was a great review, particularly for House processes and procedure (very very different to the Senate, and in my opinion more complex, but maybe because I'm just not used to it), but it was a very, very long day. Particularly because I was surrounded mainly by extraordinarily young, brand-new-to-the-Hill kids from (mostly) House member's offices (as opposed to committee staff, or Senator's staff, who tend to be a little more.... let's go with experienced). Anyone who's heard my rant about how one actually gets that first and usually entry level job in a Member's office will know what I'm talking about (connections, plain and simple, you will NOT get hired without major string pulling by some big shot on your behalf) . I think I've grown to be too nice (or paranoid) to put the rest of the rant in print. So, I found myself back in the sea of everything I grew to hate about the Hill, which prompted my career change in the first place.
Now, there is no such thing as a stupid question. If you do not know something, you should ask it. It is never stupid to seek the information you need. This is the librarian's creed, and it's true, and I believe it. But what I couldn't believe is some of the things that some people needed to know. These are people who already are in the employ of the United States Congress in some shape or form. It was very surprising, disheartening, and brought back up a lot of old angry feelings about just how unfair the whole "hiring process" is (it's not what you know, it's who you know). So they weren't stupid questions, and I won't repeat any of them here. But it was just really very...difficult.
After that (and after putting in my application for the Senate Advanced Legislative Processes Institute, and double checking that the House Advanced.... will be offered later this year), I scurried across Independence Avenue (or is it Pennsylvania once you get to 1st Street?) to the Adams Building of the Library of Congress to meet with someone related to the project I'm working on for the Committee. An hour later, and I was in another room of the Adams Building for my graduate school class: (Indexing, Abstracting and Thesaurus Design).
All in all, I spent the entire day, from 8:30am to 7:30 pm at the Library of Congress, for three very separate reasons. A very library day indeed.
