Week 4 - 5 The struggles of an intern.

Not exactly a fun week if I may say so myself.

Week 4: Monday-Wednesday 

For anyone wondering what in the world I am researching.

Researching, writing, and finishing a briefing on campaigning for disability toilets. I know many of you reading are probably wondering why disability toilets? Well few things. My MSP is actually on the Cross Party Group for Carers, and for many carers, they take care of mentally disabled people and old people who may or may not need disability toilets. Additionally a constituent (a person he represents) asked him to research into the issue. 

Why is this important: Scotland's very small compared to U.S. and at least 230,000 people need  to use a disability toilet, but the problem is  there isn't a lot of access to disability toilets. If you travel around Scotland you'll notice that a lot of places don't have lifts/ really old buildings with stairs + cramped compared to the US; thus you don't have a lot of disability toilets. In Scotland there are a total of 91 disability toilets (probably 3 in the Scottish Parliament alone.) Apparently in Aberdeen there are only 6 toilets but only 3 have changing places. Not exactly disability friendly is it? 

Thursday-Friday 

Today I worked on my other briefing (preterm pre-rupture of membranes). 

Preterm Pre-rupture of Membranes is when the amnionic sac is ruptured/ fluids are drained out of the mother, and can lead to the death of a baby, infection for the mother, and other problems.

Note: This is a bad idea to research this topic RIGHT after you finished eating breakfast or lunch. Research made me feel quite queasy and has convinced me that I do not ever want to deal with the health industry.

Anyways, I digress. I did more research on preterm pre-rupture of membranes, and I honestly was surprised that I couldn't find a lot of statistics or information about preterm pre-rupture of membranes, so in the end I produced an incredibly short briefing on that. Afterwards, I was called to work on surgery posters for my MSP. Then I designed multiple surgery posters for my MSP in a program called pixlr and started looking into the issue of helicopter safety. 

Week 5 Monday-Tuesday

An HH-65 C Dolphin emergency helicopter.

Essentially I spent the Monday researching on helicopter safety for a briefing on Richard Baker's motion "Unite's Back Home Safe Campaign." I didn't actually know what a motion was because I never dealt with motions until this week. Anyways, I actually felt confused as to what to provide in a briefing because I was told to look at the campaign whereas SPICE resources told me to look at information regarding helicopter regulations and manual like documents. I ended up providing a briefing on the Unite Campaign; however, I was a bit disappointed. On the day of the debate, the Presiding officer's staff called to tell me to tell my MSP that he should at all costs avoid speaking about the Unite Campaign because it would affect decision's members in the debate. So much for my briefing >_>;

Wednesday - Friday

Anyways after that  I did a lot more surgery posters for an Aberdeen City Council Member. Needless to say I did not have a pleasant experience working on this poster. 

One of the things to note about Scottish work experiences and people: Some Scottish people will not give you feedback and are very indirect. They will change everything but will tell you your work is very good. It's not exactly the best feeling knowing that, and I honestly wished that council member was more blunt about what she wanted so I did not spend 5 hours working on a surgery poster. Finally, after that I sent many invitation responses, and as usual organised Mark's diary. I honestly hope that next week will be better than this week.

Lessons to be learned: Parliamentary terminology!

Briefing: Briefing is a summary about the issue, and can contain things like what laws have been passed, what consultation has been said, what is a specific city doing about this issue, what is Scottish government doing about this issue etc. 

Surgery means a time when constituents can meet with their MSPS without any appointment, and I was confused till I asked a parliamentary assistant about that.

Motion is a very short summary a MSP submits welcoming, congratulating, or recognising someone of an event or issue in their constituency. Motions start out with: That the Parliament (insert verb in present tense.) talks about the event in one sentence (Insert semi colon to separate sentences)  adds another sentence about  the details of the sentence starting with verb (insert semi colon)...etc. Normally to end a motion you put a comma followed by and but a motion with a comma followed by and finally, but sometimes they may not end like that. 

E.g. Statoil Investment Boost for Aberdeen

That the Parliament WELCOMES the announcement by Statoil that it has chosen to locate its new operations centre and head office for development and production activities at the Prime Four Business Park in Kingswells; UNDERSTANDS that 700 jobs, both offshore and onshore, will be established because of this, AND BELIEVES that such long-term investment, particularly in the Mariner field, which it is estimated will have 30 years of reserves when it begins production in 2017, provides additional evidence that there is confidence in the future of the energy industry both in Aberdeen and in Scotland as a whole.

Anyways, until next time. Cheers

-Tina