Dispatches on DOGE from a former D.C. girl

What I know about the people who have been impacted from coming of age with them in Washington

When I wound up in Washington, D.C. for college, it wasn’t for any of the classic, typical D.C. reasons.

I didn’t have any personal ambitions to work for the government. I didn’t know that much about the city. In fact, most of my memories of visiting D.C. from childhood consisted of being dragged through museums and monuments that I wasn’t interested in. (Oops! That was pretty ungrateful of me.)

I’ll never forget being part of the crowd on this night.

Since I graduated from high school in 2008, my relationship with and perception of what was happening in Washington was changing—and it was all very exciting. I was also turning eighteen just in time to vote in my first presidential election. As I tried to make sense of what I was seeing and hearing, I have such vivid memories of long conversations with friends and teachers during this period. I fancied myself something of a political news junkie and used my own money to subscribe to TIME and Newsweek (paper magazines!) so I could stay on top of the latest happenings. It was such a gift, I think, to come of age in the Obama era, and my excitement about the upcoming election—and my high hopes that Obama would win—certainly added an extra layer to my mindset as I looked ahead to going to college in the nation’s capital.

Truthfully, I ended up at GW for a lot less noble reasons than wanting to show up in D.C. and change the world. A few months before I’d applied, the rug had really been pulled out from under me when I wasn’t accepted early decision to my top-choice school. I knew someone who knew someone who’d had a great experience at GW, and after some research, I liked what I learned about their journalism program. Plus, I was looking exclusively at city schools, and once I started to picture a life for myself in D.C. and visited the campus, I really loved the idea of beginning my adult life there. Some good scholarships came through and I was ready to go!

Sometimes, it’s hard for me to really connect with the version of me that spent almost four years in Washington. While I’m so grateful for the education I received there and for the friends I made, there are lots of things I would change about that experience. In a lot of ways, I felt like a fish out of water at GW—a feeling that only intensified as I realized just how many of my classmates were serious about settling in D.C. long-term and working for the government in some capacity.

But I did live in D.C.—not only for a formative period in my own life, but also for a formative one for our country.

Over the last ten years, I’ve become more political. My leanings haven’t changed (in the interest of making sure we’re on the same page, I’ll let you know that I did not vote for our current president and that I am upset but also not that surprised about what’s happened since he took office), but I’ve found ways to be more engaged. I’ve marched, I’ve written letters, and I’ve used my platforms where I can to raise awareness about the causes that are most important to me.

In which I meet myself on Election Day 2016

In the last week, I’ve experienced some real gut feelings about the state of things—and although I don’t think anyone needs any single reason to react to world or national events, it occurs to me that those gut feelings are probably linked directly to my days in D.C. and to what I observed there as a totally earnest, totally wide-eyed college student.