Sotomayor & More

The past two weeks I have had numerous great experiences. First, I had the great privilege of attending to Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing. I had to get up very early and wait in line for about two hours, but I felt that it was very important to attend in person. I really enjoyed the experience, and it was exciting seeing her in person being questioned by the senators. Even more exciting is the historical significance of watching a first Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court! At first, I thought I might not be able to make it inside because the line was really long, but eventually I ended up in the hearing room and listened for about 20 minutes, as the policy was to let each group of twenty go in and watch the hearing for twenty minutes. It was also interesting to walk inside the senate chambers.

Back at CSIS, the leadership program organized its weekly luncheon, and the main organizer asked me to be a group leader. Each group was given a position and prepared a resolution concerning a free nuclear world. My group and I were assigned to debate on the negative side, and I was tasked with presenting the arguments for the group in front of the interns in the room. Luckily, we had two interns in my group who were from the international security program and really understood the arguments very well, so they made my job relatively easy -- all that I had to do was present it.

Last week, we all had the privilege of having breakfast with the president of CSIS, who talked to us about the American political system. He gave us a quick overview of the past 80 years of the system, and talked about how President Obama is doing so far. It was a really informative breakfast, and I understood a lot more about the system just in the nutshell that he presented to us.

I concluded this past week by getting a new assignment from my boss, Andrew. This project involves looking at Obama’s policies in the Middle East and Africa, particularly governance issues. I will have more to say once I start actually working on it next week.