Wednesday, April 8th

Hi everyone!

This is Viktor Petersson writing, President of Phi Theta Kappa on our campus. This trip has already been incredible, intense and filled with learning.

Wednesday, April 8^th, we started the day by seeing the Governors office, an important part of the Executive Branch of California Government. Outside of his Office there is a huge golden bear, the symbol of California, which was donated to the Capitol building by former Governor Schwarzenegger. It is also known as the germ-bear, considering how many people who touch it on a daily basis. The Governors external affairs coordinator showed us around his office – as you walk in there are pictures of the First Ladies of California along the left wall of the long corridor, and on the right wall there are portraits of the former Governors painted by artists of their choosing. The Governors office was actually pretty basic; one of his characteristics is that he has a long picnic table where he conducts his meetings. Understandably, it was not super comfortable as the Governor has a very busy agenda and one can presume that this helps speed up the numerous meetings that take place in that office, as it did for us.

After our brief meeting with the Governors external affairs coordinator we hurried to make it to a Senate Committee on Education hearing that State Senator Hannah Beth Jackson had invited us to regarding Community Colleges and their percent of full-time versus part-time faculty. The Bill, SB 373, still in committee, strives for a 75% full-time faculty at Community Colleges on the basis that students need access to their teachers in order to ensure success. Some very valid points were made by both the support, mostly in terms of accessibility and quality of education, and the opposition that primarily dealt with budgetary issues but nothing was resolved and the Bill was passed on to another Committee.

Sitting in on these numerous Committee hearings has been valuable not only in the sense of the Internship we are doing, but also in terms of being well-rounded in your education as a whole. Understanding what is going on in the Capitol and how many bills and hearings there are every day definitely makes you realize that Government actually works and that the regulations and laws are seemingly endless.

After the hearing we had a speedy lunch to then rush to a meeting with Hannah Beth Jacksons principal consultant Chris Reefe to discuss further the political issues we are writing our papers on. I am personally writing in regards to water and the drought that we are notably in right now in California, but the topics range from Higher Education, K-12, affordable housing, alternative energy, homelessness and many more. Chris was most helpful and he, like so many others in the Capitol building, strongly advised us to pursue INTERNSHIPS. Every meeting we have had and every person we have met have all said the same things; Try to get Internships or Fellowships if you are interested in working with anything that has to do with Government, and also work on campaigns. I believe that everyone we talked to had done some type of internship before their career started or worked as lobbyists or on numerous campaigns.

I would also like to do some advertising here and say that the Phi Theta Kappa Leadership are going to be looking for new Leaders next semester, so in terms of internships; keep an eye out for that too!

After our meeting with Chris we headed to the Attorney Generals office to meet with some of her top lawyers. The Attorney General has something of a dual role in Californian Government; She is a Constitutional Officer, Head of an Executive Agency but also takes on clients, such as the state of California. In short, the Attorney Generals job is very different from any other but briefly it is to refer to the Constitution & statutes to see if there is authority for the Government to act.

This meeting was probably one of the most rewarding we have had; we were treated with a lot of respect and we got to ask questions until our time ran out. It was very beneficial to the multiple students on this trip that are considering going into Law School - I believe that the meeting persuaded some more of us to look into that.

I think that was it for me, I want to thank you for reading and if you have any other questions: Take the internship next year. You will not be disappointed.