What I Spent My Day Doing

First weeks at new jobs are usually kind of slow. I knew that coming in. But I still wasn’t really prepared for just how slow it would be. As of Thursday and all I have been able to do, work-wise, is write two briefing memos (each took 1 day max and that was with lots of extra research and many breaks for checking my email), attend one staff meeting, listen in to two conference calls that probably would not have made my schedule on busy days, and get brought up to speed on some work done on in an area I’ll be working on by another unit in the agency.

So how, exactly, have I been filling my days?

• Reading the NYT and Washington Post online….pretty much every article that looked remotely interesting.
• Checking my google reader every 10-15 minutes for new blog posts.
• Making lists of things I need to buy at places like Office Depot.
• Pondering why my local metro station is so much hotter in the morning than in the afternoon….seriously, why is this? It is almost impossible for me to make it to work in the morning without sweating but I don’t seem to have the same problem during the evening commute. Surely the temperature at 7:30am is not significantly higher than it is at 5:00pm?
• Reading (and in some cases re-reading) provisions of the health reform bill. Now as much of a policy wonk as I am, reading legislation is not normally my idea of a good time…

 You get the idea.

 Fortunately I had a meeting with one of my new bosses late yesterday afternoon and have some what of a better idea of what I’ll be doing… for the first couple of weeks at least.

 Hopefully week two will be a little bit busier!