By: Fatu Badiane Markey
Last month, I started an internship at the Statehouse in Trenton, NJ in the Office of Legislative Services (OLS). The OLS is a nonpartisan supportive office for legislators that provides many services such as general research and analysis, bill drafting, and legal opinions. I’ve been to the state capitol before and I was happy to be back for this new experience. Like most students and post-docs looking to transition out of academia, I was uncertain about how I would be received and if I would be able to do the work required. After years of running PCRs, what skillset did I have that could be useful to state government??
As I took the elevator up to the Environmental section of OLS, I felt some relief as I was met with friendly and welcoming faces from the department staff. I started my day in the OLS Library where I learned about how bills are written and annotated as they undergo change in the Senate and Assembly. Even though I have absolutely no law background, I enjoyed the fact that I could apply my ability to follow and understand protocols and to quickly pick up the patterns used in bill annotation. I found it very comforting that my “science brain” could adapt so quickly and learn these new rules. I also learned how to use the unique referencing system to trace a law all the way back to its original bill form. There is even a specific system of organization for how laws are ordered within the library. These protocols that exist within the legal system are tied to the importance of language and intent within legislation, which is a concept I never considered.
After my time in the library, I attended a special committee regarding lead contamination in New Jersey drinking water. During this committee, legislators were presented with testimony from school districts that had completed water testing as well as experts that study water contamination issues. The legislators asked those testifying many pointed questions about their data, how they conducted their studies, and potential flaws in their conclusions. With this kind of information, these lawmakers can gain an understanding of an issue and have better insight into making sensible legislation that is supported by expert testimony. Attending this committee was an eye-opening experience for me because I could clearly see the interface where science and policymaking interact and see the relevance of data in these huge decisions. I could see myself acting in an advisory or advocacy role in one of these hearings and having to communicate my scientific knowledge to a non-science audience. Again, this scenario highlighted to me how transferable my presentation and communication skills are even outside of academia.
I ended the day with my first research assignment. One of the functions of OLS is to act as support staff for the legislature during the bill writing process. This can include researching topics of legislative interest for lawmakers or their staff. I think it’s fair to say that at this point in my education, I can do a literature search very well. The only difference was that I had to rely primarily on legislative resources as opposed to scientific databases. With everything I had learned earlier in the day from the OLS Library, I dove into my research assignment very quickly. Mentally digesting and making sense of large amounts of information is second nature to any graduate student who has spent years reading and understanding scientific literature. At this point I was so relieved to see how my scientific training had served to my advantage throughout the day. I was honest in asking questions about new information I did not understand, but I had very few problems overall adapting to this new environment.
The feeling of insecurity about leaving academia is not new to any student or post-doc in biomedical research. I had a lot of reservations before starting this internship about how I would be received and if I would be successful. We have all heard the negative comments directed towards people who left academia to pursue other career tracks. And this negativity sits in our minds and makes us doubt what we are capable of. Many skills I have mastered from my years in lab were completely applicable to my new role as an intern in the Statehouse. With such a positive start to this new experience, I feel confident that as my internship continues I will have many more successes along the way. The journey away from academia starts with one step, but you must be willing to take that first step. I guarantee you the path ahead is not as treacherous as some would have you believe.