Post-CSIS

I both fear and anxiously await working in my profession, whatever that may be.   The challenge presented by the trip to CSIS was inspiring.  I have had to work in a stressful and constant profession for a short time, so I was slightly prepared for the long hours and conference like format of the presentations.  I was not prepared for the level of discussion.  One of the most repeated benefits of think tanks in our readings was their ability to raise the quality of policy debate.  Experiencing that first hand helped me truly understand what it meant.  Each of our speakers was an impressive display of intelligence, knowledge and experience.  The CSIS articles that I’ve read were only a shadow of the people that wrote them.

One of my first observations was how recent their data was.  It is odd to consider how late we are used to receiving information.  Normally, when we read textbooks or reports, the information is already a few months or even a few years old.  That wouldn’t fly in D.C.  Some of their statistics were just a week old.   I know during my research for Mexican Drug Cartels, we would find information that was only a couple months old and begin working it into our policy recommendations.  Then a more recent source would pop up and completely change the basis we began an argument on.  I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to create policy on an ever changing landscape, where even one hour’s information might be different than the next.  Also, they must have an extraordinary ability to truly understand what the data means.  While we did use raw data to support some of our own conclusions, reading other analyses really expanded my thinking on the implications one dataset can imply.  

I imagine all of the speakers were busy and was surprised with their willingness to set aside time for such a small group.  The life of Arnaud de Borchgrave seems like something from the movies.  I’ve read a few bios on him since his presentation and would definitely pick up an auto-biography by the guy.  It was an invaluable experience to hear their thoughts on current events.  The format of their presentations not only was informative, but also demonstrated how they think and formulate their ideas.  During the Q&A presentations, I felt like asking them to just tell us what they believed to be most important.  However, by asking questions I was more able to discover unique information relevant to my interests.

This experience has made me both fearful and excited.  As one of the young professionals stated, we will most likely hate the first two years of our job in D.C.  There are long days and no room for a social life, although the nature of the job seems social enough.  Perhaps so many Political Science majors get their masters just to avoid that life for a couple more years.  Though, I am also excited to work under so many great minds.  However, Murray Weidenbaum reminded us that not everyone working for think tanks is brilliant.  I guess I’ll just have to find the brilliant ones.  If I get to work with or under anyone like who we saw at CSIS, I would feel extremely fortunate.