Week One

Gabe,

Now that the nerves has settled, prepare for the real work to begin. Having worked almost a full week, there are a few things you should understand. First of all, realize that the work you do will be very varied and usually out of your realm of knowledge. Secondly and on a related note, make sure to utilize your profound Googling skills. Now is the time for your unique Google acumen to shine. Lastly, realize that you can make mistakes. It will be better to try and have your work corrected then to merely sit at your computer worried about erroneously creating a commercial land use review flowchart (because in that case no work would get done).

While working in Detroit, I hope that you get a chance to witness the neighborhoods distanced from Downtown and Midtown so that you get to see the parts of Detroit that haven’t been in the news throughout the past few years. Additionally, I hope that you become acquainted with these areas as there truly is more to Detroit than Downtown and Midtown.

In terms of contribution, I hope to serve the greater Detroit area through my work for the Mayor. If there is one reason to go into government that really resonates with you, it would likely be the ability to effect change and I hope that your work ultimately serves as a means to that end.

Having been interested in policy development and implementation for a while now, you probably hope to gain a concrete understanding of what the policy process is like of the ground, right? Yea I’m right.

Now repeat after me: “I will not run, I will not climb, I will compete, I will have fun”