3 months later...
Right. So despite the prodding of several friends, my attempts at blogging have been a uh, shall we say, a miserable failure (groans from all the political folks, blank stares from the other 99% of the population).
So umm, wow... where to even begin. Well, I am now in Ames, Iowa, and have been for the past 72 days (but who's counting right? ha). In some ways, it feels like a short time, but really, in most ways it feels like I've been here forever. The work out here is hard, to put it mildly. The hours are long - we're lucky if we get out before 10pm on the weekdays, and forget about weekends being a respite. We had one off until the caucus (which is Jan. 19th), and I took it last weekend - more on that later.
So what does a field organizer do, exactly? I'm still trying to figure that out actually. Basically, we suck up to the active democrats and elected officials in the counties we are assigned (mine are Boone and Greene), and hope that because of our sucking up, they will love our candidate. We also make looooots of phone calls, as in, 5+ hours a day, as in, during training we were told, "your phone is your best friend."
The basic call goes like this:
Me: "Hi, my name is Courtney and I'm calling with the John Edwards for President campaign, how are you doing this evening?" (unsaid: I could really care less about how you're doing, I just have to ask you because it's on my script.)
Iowan: "ehhh, fine" (unsaid: Why the hell are you calling me? I just want to eat my dinner)
me: "Good, well, i was just calling to talk to you a little about Senator Edwards..."
Here's my take on the calls - I actually don't mind doing them. When you are working for a candidate that you love and really believe in, and deep-down, you're a policy wonk at heart, the calls can be kinda fun. The Iowans we're calling know their shit when it comes to politics, and when the one out of every fifty calls that decides to engage you in conversation, it can be kind of fun. However, because there are so many candidates this year, everything has started a bit earlier than usual, which doesn't exactly fly with the Iowans. So they choose to vent their frustrations on poor little field staffers like myself.
So anyway, this really was intended to be a full update, but it's going to have to do for now b/c I want to get the heck out of the office. I think we're going to see Lost in Translation tonight, so that should be fun. I have to get up around 7am tomorrow (yes, that would be Saturday) to go to a meeting, and that will be decidedly not fun at all, so I have to get my kicks in tonight - early tonight.
So umm, wow... where to even begin. Well, I am now in Ames, Iowa, and have been for the past 72 days (but who's counting right? ha). In some ways, it feels like a short time, but really, in most ways it feels like I've been here forever. The work out here is hard, to put it mildly. The hours are long - we're lucky if we get out before 10pm on the weekdays, and forget about weekends being a respite. We had one off until the caucus (which is Jan. 19th), and I took it last weekend - more on that later.
So what does a field organizer do, exactly? I'm still trying to figure that out actually. Basically, we suck up to the active democrats and elected officials in the counties we are assigned (mine are Boone and Greene), and hope that because of our sucking up, they will love our candidate. We also make looooots of phone calls, as in, 5+ hours a day, as in, during training we were told, "your phone is your best friend."
The basic call goes like this:
Me: "Hi, my name is Courtney and I'm calling with the John Edwards for President campaign, how are you doing this evening?" (unsaid: I could really care less about how you're doing, I just have to ask you because it's on my script.)
Iowan: "ehhh, fine" (unsaid: Why the hell are you calling me? I just want to eat my dinner)
me: "Good, well, i was just calling to talk to you a little about Senator Edwards..."
Here's my take on the calls - I actually don't mind doing them. When you are working for a candidate that you love and really believe in, and deep-down, you're a policy wonk at heart, the calls can be kinda fun. The Iowans we're calling know their shit when it comes to politics, and when the one out of every fifty calls that decides to engage you in conversation, it can be kind of fun. However, because there are so many candidates this year, everything has started a bit earlier than usual, which doesn't exactly fly with the Iowans. So they choose to vent their frustrations on poor little field staffers like myself.
So anyway, this really was intended to be a full update, but it's going to have to do for now b/c I want to get the heck out of the office. I think we're going to see Lost in Translation tonight, so that should be fun. I have to get up around 7am tomorrow (yes, that would be Saturday) to go to a meeting, and that will be decidedly not fun at all, so I have to get my kicks in tonight - early tonight.