Alex Paolucci | CIIP 2023 Blog Portfolio

Posted: July 5, 2023

Orientation Week

Orientation really helped me examine Baltimore and my place in it on a much deeper level than I have in the past. Because I had taken a public health B’more course over intersession, I went into orientation feeling like I had a good grasp of the problems Baltimore faces and a decent understanding of Hopkins’ role in them. However, orientation really forced me to confront my place as an individual and a member of the various communities I am in from within the systems operating in Baltimore. I had previously thought loosely about the role my race and my Hopkins status operate in Baltimore but had never directly considered how they would impact Baltimore residents’ perspective of me and my interactions with them. I feel I have a better understanding now of what it means to understand my privilege and be conscientious of it in my interactions with others.

A speaker that particularly helped with this was the discussion on Johns Hopkins’ role within Baltimore. While I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about Johns Hopkins’ speckled history, this presentation made me realize that there is so much more I don’t know. I had never heard about the lead testing before, and only knew vaguely about the East Baltimore Development Initiative. I also found the speaker’s tangible advice very helpful: I had never even considered things like not showing my phone to not highlight possible class disparities and not wearing Hopkins gear into the community. Something about the direct and individual nature of this advice really made me acknowledge myself as part of the systems of oppression operating in Baltimore and helped me understand how I could work to change and dismantle these systems.

I also really appreciate the emphasis on community and listening to solutions from the people who are living the problem throughout every presentation. So often in academia, it is easy to get caught up in the mindset that we have to be the one to find the answer to every problem, which often contributes to the saviorism attitude of people coming into communities and enforcing their own solutions without actually consulting community members. The community-based solution approach creates room for not always knowing all the answers, and instead letting work be about the development of solutions and ongoing pushes for change instead of a one-stop solution that somehow cures all societal ills.

Overall, I found orientation to be an inspiring week that really pushed me to question my relationship with Baltimore and reassess the saviorist attitude that can sometimes infiltrate discussions of societal problems.

Week 2

The biggest adjustment I’ve had to face this week was in the level of responsibility I was expected to take on. I was assigned a lot of new projects and tasks this week, and while I have really enjoyed them and am very excited to continue my work, it’s definitely been an adjustment as I get used to managing the workload. I’ve already learned that using a to-do list is incredibly helpful for keeping track of everything I have to do, and I generally can get things done faster than I anticipate. Another thing I’ve had to adjust to is being treated like a professional adult and authority in certain contexts. This week, I had to do a lot of coordinating with various people over the phone and email. These people deferred to me as the authority, and expected me to have the answers to their questions. I am not used to older, more experienced adults looking to me for answers, and there were definitely times where I felt a bit of imposter syndrome. I felt as if I didn’t really know what I was doing, and like I shouldn’t really be looked to for answers. However, I was ultimately able to answer everyone’s questions and handle everything assigned to me. I also got tripped up with certain etiquette things that I’m not used to. For example, I was initially unsure whether to address emails to a person’s first or last name, as previously I have interacted with adults over email as a student and not as a fellow working adult. Additionally, I don’t frequently make phone calls, and so I had to get used to addressing people on the phone and leaving voicemails with all the necessary information. By the end of the week, I felt like I had gotten the hang of all these things, and I now feel more confident going into this week.

Week 3

Every morning I start by checking my email. I usually have a lot of emails to go through on constituent issues, social media posts I need to make, and Field Trip Fridays coordinating. I answer all of those or put them on my to-do list for the day if they are bigger tasks I need to attend to. Then, I check on responses to the Field Trip Friday application form and input them into my spreadsheet. Next, I check on my constituent tickets to see what I need to do there. Most of my constituent tickets have to do with permitting issues and sidewalk repairs. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I answer constituent voicemails as well. This involves listening to voicemails as they come in throughout the day, logging them, and calling back the constituents who left them to let them know their call has been received and get more information if necessary. Doing constituent services has allowed me to meet many interesting people who are passionate about a variety of different topics in their community. For example, we have a weekly caller who talks to us about current plans for a bowling alley in his neighborhood. After all this, I begin work on whatever my major project for the day is. Over the past few weeks, this has included planning a Field Trip Fridays press conference, writing a press release, writing legislation, planning the social media, photographing events Councilmember Cohen attends, updating the councilmember’s website, and designing a new webpage for Field Trip Fridays. My favorite project so far has been writing the legislation, as this related to what I want to do with my life the most. My dream job is being a policy writer for an elected official, and that is exactly what this was! Additionally, the legislation was on conditions for Baltimore city workers, which is an interesting issue to me that connects to other topics I am passionate about.

Week 4

I have learned a lot through this internship that I plan to use later in life. Some of the big skills are things like social media management, planning press conferences, and writing legislation. On a more day-to-day level, I have learned a lot of soft skills that are also really valuable. I have gotten a lot more comfortable making phone calls and sending emails through all the constituent services work I am doing. I used to be very anxious when doing things like that, but now I feel a lot more comfortable and professional in my correspondences.

Beyond just this, the most important experience I am getting from this internship is experience in government. I get to see all steps of the governmental process, from the conception of a policy to its execution. Through this internship, I am experiencing what the actual workplace of someone working for a politician looks like, and what the job entails. Considering this is the line of work I want to go into, this experience is invaluable to me.

I am also getting a lot of experience with social media management and website design, which weren’t necessarily what I was looking forward to with this internship, but I am coming to realize are incredibly valuable skills. Unlike some of the other experiences of this internship, I can utilize these skills in almost any field I could ultimately end up in. Most professions require some sort of social media presence and usually always require a website. Therefore, these are incredibly transferable skills, even if I end up in a field completely unrelated to government and policy. To some extent, my constituent services also falls in this category. While most fields don’t require constituent services in quite the same way, many fields have a customer service element, which is similar.

Week 5

I feel like my goal for the summer have stayed very similar, and I am on track to meet them. My biggest goal was to try and get experience with the legislative process and policy writing, and I have multiple projects related to those areas. I have already had the opportunity to write a piece of legislation on Baltimore city maintenance worker conditions, which taught me about how legislation is written, formatted, and edited. Additionally, good working conditions is an important issue to me, and it connects to many of the social and economic equality issues that I am most passionate about. Now, I am embarking on a new project researching public housing to help determine Councilmember Cohen’s stance on current and future city efforts. I am incredibly excited about this project, as I get to research on a very interesting and nuanced topic to help determine policy surrounding it. This is exactly the kind of work I hope to be doing in my professional career, so I am incredibly excited to have this opportunity to try it out now. Additionally, public housing is a particularly interesting topic to me because it aligns well with the kind of issues that I am most passionate about but is an area I don’t consider myself incredibly knowledgeable about but want to learn more about, and this project gives me the opportunity to do just that. Therefore, I feel I am very much on track to meet my goals for the summer due to these two projects giving me the experience I went into the summer hoping to gain.

Week 7

The most direct way my work has intersected with other placements is through the Field Trip Fridays program. My office organized this program, which provides free tickets and grants to nonprofits who work with kids to take their kids on field trips throughout the summer. We worked with about 50 different nonprofits, some of which could have been other placements. I know several CIIP interns are working at summer camps and neighborhood centers, which made up many of the nonprofits who participated in this program. This entire project was a great example of collaboration across different sectors in the city, because we brought together our office, nonprofits, and different cultural institutions of Baltimore.

More broadly, intersectionality impacted every aspect of the work I did. Because District 1 has the highest percentage of Latinx people in the city, we often had to consider language barriers in our work to provide resources to the district. Recently, I have been working on researching public housing, which requires intersectionality as public housing residents are disproportionately minorities due to the higher rates of poverty in minority communities. Intersectionality has to be a factor in any work the office does, especially considering the racial diversity in Baltimore and District 1.

My placement also intersects with any other placement in Baltimore city government. Several interns in my peer mentor group work with various government agencies which interact with my placement. For example, I know one intern is at the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. During my first week, part of my job as social media manager was to post flyers for an event hosted by MIMA. This is just one small way various government agencies interacted with my placement.