Truax:Thoughts from DC
Lindsay Truax
Issue date: 1/27/10 Section: Voices
As I write this I am on a bus leaving DC and headed to Philly ($28 round trip, thank you very much!) to see my daughter and sister for the weekend. I am a long way from home - both physically and culturally. On a typical Friday I might be going to see a movie at Swamp Fox Theater or making dinner at home. Needless to say, the people sitting around me on this bus are far from familiar. They are people of every walk of life, all headed to the same destination, all for different reasons, all pretending not to see one another even though we're all closer than comfort allows (a learned habit that one perfects after a few days in a big city). So, why am I in such unfamiliar territory?
I am in Washington, DC, as part of the South Carolina Washington Semester Program, an amazing organization run out of the University of South Carolina Honors College. With the help of countless staff and faculty at Francis Marion (thanks so much to all of you, you know who you are!), I am able to earn an entire semester's worth of credit while living in my favorite city in the United States. Through this program I am, for the first time, experiencing what it is like to live in a big city. A city with fairly reliable public transportation, where a car is neither necessary nor desired (unless you really like the way dents look); where getting groceries is an adventure in itself, either lugged home via the Metro and a suitcase or ordered online and delivered to your front door, and where some of the most powerful people in the world make their home in the same space as one of the country's highest percentages of homeless people.
DC is amazing in so many ways and I feel compelled to share all of them with you, but in the interest of attempting to hold the attention of those of you who I know only pick up the paper to kill time in between classes, I will TRY not to! I love history. I love politics. I love different cultures. I even love cold weather. Maybe that's why it has been so easy for me to fall in love with this city. Everywhere you look there are gorgeous historical buildings filled with amazing people and things and heart-wrenching monuments erected in honor of the men, women and ideas that have made our country what it is. Want to know where I had class Tuesday night? In Majority Whip Jim Clyburn's conference room in the Capitol Building. Want to know whose hand I shook this afternoon? Brian Lamb, the CEO and founder of C-SPAN, where I am interning for the next three months.
I am in Washington, DC, as part of the South Carolina Washington Semester Program, an amazing organization run out of the University of South Carolina Honors College. With the help of countless staff and faculty at Francis Marion (thanks so much to all of you, you know who you are!), I am able to earn an entire semester's worth of credit while living in my favorite city in the United States. Through this program I am, for the first time, experiencing what it is like to live in a big city. A city with fairly reliable public transportation, where a car is neither necessary nor desired (unless you really like the way dents look); where getting groceries is an adventure in itself, either lugged home via the Metro and a suitcase or ordered online and delivered to your front door, and where some of the most powerful people in the world make their home in the same space as one of the country's highest percentages of homeless people.
DC is amazing in so many ways and I feel compelled to share all of them with you, but in the interest of attempting to hold the attention of those of you who I know only pick up the paper to kill time in between classes, I will TRY not to! I love history. I love politics. I love different cultures. I even love cold weather. Maybe that's why it has been so easy for me to fall in love with this city. Everywhere you look there are gorgeous historical buildings filled with amazing people and things and heart-wrenching monuments erected in honor of the men, women and ideas that have made our country what it is. Want to know where I had class Tuesday night? In Majority Whip Jim Clyburn's conference room in the Capitol Building. Want to know whose hand I shook this afternoon? Brian Lamb, the CEO and founder of C-SPAN, where I am interning for the next three months.
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