HARVARD Alumni Red Book Submission by Kelzie - 2014

Kelzie Goes to Washington or: How I Learned To Make Sausage

Twelve hours after our Commencement, I headed to Myanmar (Burma) as part of <i>Let’s Go: Southeast Asia</i>, and my parents headed home with four years of memories and one very expensive piece of paper. The best way I can describe it is this: the people of Myanmar are not allowed to use the Internet or e-mail; there is one newspaper, which is written by the junta; and cell phones and passports are prohibitively expensive. The first week you crave news, information, ask people to send you anything and everything about what is going on in the outside world. The second week you realize you are getting behind, the gaps in what you know grow, you never find out how one news arc concluded, and although you read the one newspaper available, you know it is artifice. The third week you don’t care about the news, there is nothing beyond the overturned truck on the main artery out of town and how long the power was out the night before. And you get scared, very scared, because they have turned yet another reading, thinking, engaged human being into a disconnected, limited, controlled citizen. I will never take my freedom, personal or civil, for granted again. I will never diminish the choice to be engaged, or not.

Side note: It seems that I have amassed quite a track record in the almost five years since. Every country I worked in for Let’s Go, save one, has descended into even further disarray: Nepal (overthrow of the king by rebels), Tibet (name it and the Chinese have done it), and Burma (Cyclone Nargis). Namibia remains a relatively stable democracy, in which 8 percent of the population holds almost 90 percent of the wealth. No wonder countries keep rejecting my visa applications.

When I returned to the United States, I came to Washington, DC, to see what sort of impact I could have on democracy. I arrived with two suitcases, a couch to sleep on, and no job or internship. My parents were determined to impress a deadline upon the situation, a deadline by which I would have gainful employment or return home. The deadline didn’t stick, but nor did the lack of a job, and here I remain nearly four and a half years later. The “I told you so” is still being saved for a very special day. 

I work in Congress, for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and find myself elbow-deep in the proverbial sausage making. The Catch-22 of working on the Hill is that you can’t get a job on the Hill unless you have worked on the Hill, so like everyone else I started at the bottom, sorting mail and taking phone calls from people one pill short of their daily dose. The ladder rungs aren’t very far apart at the bottom, and I got a good number of interviews simply because people were intrigued why a Harvard graduate with a degree in physics wanted to work in politics. Apparently I was able to give them a satisfactory answer, and eventually found myself working for someone I like, who represents a district I understand and lets me handle issues I enjoy. 

The place pays my bills and student loans, but I fully admit: the Hill is where young people come to die. They arrive young and excited and healthy, and leave old and cynical and overweight. I saw it coming, at least the overweight part, and joined a gym. From there I started running again, returning to the marathon distance I pursued in college, and eventually bought a bike and figured out how to swim. One plus one plus one equals three, at least so my math professors taught me, and now I train for and race triathlons. It keeps me busy and poor and strong. My two biggest gripes from college were that we couldn’t turn it off, we had to think about class and assignments 24/7/365, and that I also went to bed exhausted in the brain but not in the body. Now, to some extent, I’ve struck a balance: without work I would burn out my body, and without training I would burn up my mind (and probably be twice as large). 

Until we graduated from college, every four years marked a known and anticipated evolutionary step: elementary school, middle school, high school, college. It was laid out, with support staff and pamphlets. Four years are up, and the urge, both internal and external, to move on is strong. But without a guidance counselor or standardized tests, I have succumbed to inertia for the time being.

Congresses last two years, after which the Constitution hits the big red reset button in the sky. Stay in Congress long enough and they all start to look the same. But on January 20, that button will bring about something entirely new: (potentially potent) Change. It has meant, and will mean, something entirely different for everyone, and that is especially attractive for someone elbow-deep in the sausage making. Once again I find myself giddy with excitement, to meet my classmate at 1600 Pennsylvania, to sign up for my first semester’s class load in the bills Congress takes up right out of the gate, and to sit with my housemates in the dining hall over Sunday brunch and talk about how we are going to change the world. Maybe the next four years of my life are starting, maybe this is the next evolutionary step, and maybe for once I’m prepared: I’ve struck a balance and I’m elbow-deep.




When I submitted to the Red Book five years ago I was doing legislative work on Capitol Hill for a Member of Congress, as I had been since graduation.  President Obama had been President-Elect Obama for a mere ten days, and as a re-read of my submission makes entirely obvious, I was effusive with enthusiasm for Washington, D.C., the political and legislative processes, and <i>CHANGE</i>, in the way “change” was invoked in the Fall of 2008.  Little did I know just how much <i>CHANGE</i> I was going to get.

Imagine the most 180-degree different way to spend the second five years after our graduation, if the first five years were spent working in politics.  That’s what I have been doing.  But first I had to hit political bottom.

The first half of 2009 was an electric time to work in Congress: millions of people standing in sub-freezing temperatures on The Mall for the Inauguration, multiple economic stimulus packages representing billions of dollars, two wars ending in one way or another, and sweeping health care reform legislation.  With no account for political affiliation, the sense that <i>Sh!t Is Getting Done</i> permeated Congress, and really the country, to a man.  Let me tell you, it was heady.

In July 2009, I had been on Capitol Hill for nearly five years and my boss was embroiled in writing health care legislation in sub-committee.  When some Members tried to trade health care coverage for abortions for the right to carry machine guns on the streets of Washington, D.C., all of my little nits and picks suddenly coalesced into a big neon arrow saying “Stage Left This Way.”

My days in Congress were over, and my relief could not have been more immediate or absolute.  I used to have six newspapers delivered to my desk every day; I haven’t read a physical newspaper other than to do the crossword puzzle since the day I left.  I haven’t regretted my departure, or its abrupt nature, a single minute.

Not that I begrudge or don’t admire those who remained behind or have arrived since.  Nearly all of the 20,000 staffers who populate Capitol Hill pursue the work because they want to change the world, in their own way, on their own scale.  I too dreamed of knowing some mark there had been made by me.  But in (my admittedly cynical) retrospect, the more I knew about how things worked, the less I wanted any part in that enterprise.  Not when being the conduit between the citizenry and the legislative process was more time explaining "why not" instead of "why".  To an ever-increasing degree many legislative initiatives are mutually exclusive, and political discourse is bullet points exchanged over the national news, while those staffers in-between and in the shadows are left to make negligible gains toward an unachievable end-state.

Anyway, with no job and no “next” I did what any reasonable, newly-free, high-on-life person would do: I signed up for my first Ironman.  The race was in ten days.  I had been training for triathlons (swimming, biking, and running) since 2006, but mostly to stretch the leash my office-provided Blackberry represented, and burn off a seriously overwhelming amount of stress and free food.  I hadn’t done my first triathlon race until 10 months earlier, the fall of 2008; I had no idea how I would do or even what time guesstimates to offer my parents, who were spectating.

That ten-day interlude turned into a ten-hour race that determined the next five years of my life: I finished second female amateur and earned my license to race professionally.  I raced a few more times as an amateur, including two World Championships, but since July 2010, I have been a professional triathlete and endurance sports coach.

How’s that for “no longer works in politics”?

In the early spring of 2011, I moved from Washington, D.C., to Austin, Texas, to find a home among a small, but successful community of other professionals.  When I am home in Texas, I live something resembling an under-graduate lifestyle.  I have very little structured time, trading 9-5 for more abstract to-dos, like “complete 5 hour bike ride” or “write athletes’ schedules for the week.”  I wear either spandex or pajamas a good deal of the day, and only put on make-up for births, deaths, and weddings.  If I love you enough, I might also wear high heels.

However, triathlon both requires and allows a nomadic existence.  I have spent winters training in Fuerteventura of the Canary Islands, and missed major American holidays racing in Brazil and Mexico.  It is really hard to find Thanksgiving turkey in Cozumel.  With twenty specific pieces of clothing and my bike, I can live and train on the road for three months.  In retrospect, my three summers of research-writer work for <i>Let’s Go</i> gave me more professional development than my physics degree!

The significant upside of my couch-and-bike-as-a-desk job is how much more in touch with family and friends I can remain.  I can finally attend weddings and spend meaningful holiday time with my parents as they age.  I choose races near friends to save everyone a trip, and get only slightly weird looks when I’m researching local pools that open before dawn.

My non-training hours are filled with volunteer work on three Boards of Directors.  I am the secretary-treasurer for the Harvard Club of Austin, helping to awaken the three-decades old club after a lengthy dormancy.  Children’s Water For Life (CWFL) is a non-profit that ties me back to the time I spent in Africa for Let’s Go.  Run by kids for kids, CWFL raises money and awareness for drinking water wells in Kenya, located to allow children to stay in school longer.  I fill one of two legally required adult roles on the Board and continue to be bowled over by the sheer capability of motivated elementary and middle school students.  Lastly, I represent the triathlete community on the Central Texas arm of the United States Masters Swimming association.

For those of you who have read this far and are still wondering: no, no husband or children.  Newborns don’t pack too well in checked luggage or bike boxes.

Unlike five years ago, I do not feel like I have everything figured out.  In fact, as with everything else in this write up, exactly the opposite is now true.  My brain is bored and my body is tired (for good reason).  Competing as a professional athlete is actually a very extremely unhealthy endeavor, even after removing illegal doping from the equation, and I want to spend more time flexing muscles above my shoulders.

I cannot offer a big summary statement except to say that unlike five years ago, I would guess the next five years will entail something completely different than the last five.  Now I just have to decide what that is going to be!