"I was dropped, and I'm okay"

Andrea Dorfman = damn cool.

I've been getting up extra early lately because I've had all these professional-y events to go to lately - the Women in House reception Tuesday, my shadowing placement Wednesday, then the Tri-Mentoring dinner tonight. And I just invested in a flatiron so my hair looks super hot. On Tuesday at school I would occasionally be talking to somebody about something completely unrelated, then they would suddenly tell me how much they liked my hair. I felt a little like...Belinda Stronach, in a way.

So yesterday I job shadowed Dave Wilson, MLA for Sackvile-Cobequid (my former riding) as part of the Women in House events. It was soooo totally wicked...I got to sit in on the Public Accounts meeting while they questioned Ernie Fage, former minister of Economic Development, over the issue that journalists have affectionately named "potatogate." It was absolutely fascinating, at least for a Poli-Sci nerd like me, to see this guy who had voluntarily agreed to sit before the committee (of course, the optics would have been pretty bad if he hadn't) and then refused to answer any relevant questions, hiding behind a very broad interpretation of cabinet confidentiality. What was interesting was that he eventually slipped up during the media scrum afterwards and blurted out one of the things that he had refused to answer at the meeting itself. Even more interesting is that the Herald journalist, at least, didn't comment on that fact in the paper today. I mean, I'm just a lowly poli-sci student and hearing that admission made my head spin around immediately but apaprently a trained journalist didn't pick up on it or something.

Seriously though, there was a 45-minute media scrum after the meeting, between them interviewing Fage, Michel Sampson (Liberal - I'm not sure if I spelled his last name right) and Graham Steele, the NDPer who did the questioning at that meeting. It was pointed out to me that for politicians, dealing with the media like that is a total mind game, because out of a 15-minute interview, when you're having questions hurled at you from all directions, they'll probably pick one or two sentences to quote so you need to amke sure that every sentence you say is something that you wouldn't regret if it were taken out of context and printed. And that's exhausting.

Then I went to the NDP caucus office and got to sit in on a little strategizing session of the 3 members of the Public Accounts committee (Dave Wilson, Graham Steele and Maureen MacDonald) and it was just sooo neat to see how you have to kind of guess what the other parties are going to do and then swing with the punches when they do something different. Before I was thinking that I might eventually want to go into politics. Now I'm thinking that I definitely want to eventually go into politics! And if I can get a job working for the NDP or the Advisory Council or some other related organization next Fall, holy crap I will just die. So awesome. And I don't care if that makes me a total nerd. I am keen and proud. (haha keen and...keenan. never mind.)

So Adam took me to dinner at Mexico Lindo last night and then actually agreed to go to the Advisory Council (on the Status of Women, in case you're all wondering who I'm talking about) movie night for International Women's Day. How lucky am I? It was a bunch of shorts by female Nova Scotian filmmakers and they were quite good despite the array of technical difficulties involved.

Today I had a sort-of debate in Policy Analysis...we had to defend the recommendations we made in our group project on the African Union. I think we did pretty well...although it's pretty hard to make suggestions for African development that everybody hasn't heard a million times before and aren't utterly disillusioned about. oh well, the prof isn't a tough marker and we're practically done that class for the year as of Tuesday when we pass in our final report.

The Tri-Mentoring closing dinner was tonight (overcooked pasta, although it was a vast improvement over the plate of raw vegetables that Aramark fed me at the last scholars' luncheon) and I somehow found myself sitting at the VIP table with the president of the University etc, as well as Diana Whalen's husband, although I didn't find that out until after dinner when he had left. Diana is a fantastic lady and a huge supporter of Women in House.

So my mentor Andrea and I made plans to go out for drinks sometime in the next couple of months and she's still trying to arrange an interesting day when I'm available so that I can kind of follow her around and get a feel for the job. She is so awesome.

Sorry for the long rambling post...it's just been a crazy couple of days. I'm sure you all understand.

P.S. Wednesday after I got home, Hipster-in-Training and I sat around online looking up anagrams of our own names. The best one for mine was "anal rad ex." Mt full name proffered ups ome pretty nonsensical ones, but Adam's was a veritable gold mine. The best was "a laid mauve rug" although "a veda mail guru," "a guava deli rum" and "a miraged uvula" are also fairly awesome. So nerdy but so very, very wicked cool.