Having time to spend time in DC without classes or exams looming over my head, I have had time to spend time with non-law school people around the city. Between reconnecting and meeting new people at a friend's birthdays and the DC Bruins Holiday Party I feel so . . . unpolitical.
My friend whose birthday I went to worked on the Biden campaign. Though I would naturally assume that his network would be other Biden people, I found myself also talking to people who were on the Obama, Edwards, and Richardson camps. They all talked about their current state of unemployment, which city they campaigned in in Iowa, and stories from the trail.
The next day at the holiday party, I chatted with friends, also unemployed, who worked for organized labor. There was a friend who worked for a digital political consulting firm, another who worked for Housing & Urban Developement (HUD), the former head of the Richardson campaign in Nevada, someone from the Conference of Mayors, etc.
So many political and government people.
Considering that politics used to dominate my life in college, it's funny how quickly the law school bubble and living in the upper NW part of the district can pull you away from everything. When people asked me if I was actually going to practice law, they were surprised when I said yes. The other thing about DC is that so many people going to law school here use it as a conduit for government, think tanks, foreign affairs, or higher-level campaign jobs.
I may be a transplant, but this week I felt like a foreigner, a beltway outsider. Not necessarily in a bad way. Just a funny observation that took me three years to realize.
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