Out of the Office

My second week on the job I felt like I barely saw my desk. This week we had a staff planning retreat because the Chief Operating Officer of the DC Office was in town so we were out of the office for two days to talk about management and long-term strategic planning. We are trying to move Public Citizen into the 21st century and get the young people of the world interested in what we are doing, so in that respect the other interns and I were able to help out the whole organization with our "youth" perspective.

That was nice because for the rest of the two days it was a little bit difficult to figure out what my place was at these meetings. I had only been a part of Public Citizen for a week and a half and then suddenly I'm sitting in a meeting about where Public Citizen is going and all sorts of other big-time topics. It was hard to decide if any input or thoughts I had would be helpful or naive and useless given my relative inexperience, but I tried to find a good middle-ground for participation. I think that's one of the difficult things about being an intern in general--you are given responsibility and you want that responsibility, but you are also very young and new, so how much independence do you let yourself have? Should you make suggestions to the regular staff?

The good news of the week is that I sat down with my direct supervisor and talked about my specific project for the summer, which is going to be to work on an energy efficiency campaign for electric co-ops. I am going to do a survey/report of Texas cooperatives, come up with educational materials, attend annual meetings when I can, etc. Its exciting to have a tangible end goal to work toward--now that I have that I can be more self-directed.

This week I also made another trip to San Antonio--this time for a City Council B Session where the city unveiled their sustainability plan. It was really encouraging to see the city so on-board with efficiency, green jobs, and greener transportation and it was exciting to see a city council in action. San Antonio's municipal utility CPS has set a relatively high goal for energy savings through efficiency plans and their president made a very clear commitment to efficiency at this session. So the meeting was great, and hopefully one of these times I will actually get to see some of San Antonio outside an office.

So that's my week--Tier 1 you should post about your weekly outings! I think you went to see Buzz this weekend, whose lifestyle makes him pretty much the poster boy for energy efficiency. Thinking back on that trip I am especially impressed/appreciative of people like Buzz after all the reading I've done for this job.

Anyway, good wishes from Austin to the SAE house!