Week One
Washington DC may not be a very exotic place as far as post-conflict locations go. But considering that I've never been here before and I lack any meaningful sense of direction, I am sure the city will provide ample opportunity for adventure.
Work at USIP has already started up. I am curently working on a project for INPROL, a websit that USIP works on. INPROL is a great source of information for rule of law practitioners, providing access to resources and providing a forum for practitioners to ask questions for other practitioners and experts to answer. After responses are posted to a query, USIP someimes creaes a consolidated response, summarizing the responses and adding an academic research aspect.
My task right now is to draft a consolidated response to a query about assessing administrative law systems. Unfortunately, there is not much out there about how to assess administrative law, so a lot of my work thus far has been research to gather any information that might help in formulating the response. I'm also contacting experts who have written on the topic for their input.
Settling into the office has been really easy. I have a nice desk with a view out onto the street, which can get a litle distracting when the fire trucks go screaming by. The people working there are great. One of the program assistants even went to my undergrad. That alone is not saying much, considering how huge our undergrad was, but we also happened to be in the same senior thesis seminar, a class of about 15 people. Just goes to show you what a small world it is!