This week has been one of my busiest thus far. I began with Morristown Beard, a school in New Jersey, and led them around the city from Monday to Wednesday. We visited the typical sites in D.C.- Smithsonians, memorials, etc.- but it was a very easy group as they were well-behaved and very disciplined. On Wednesday evening, I had a Nightview tour with a group from West Virginia and then had a few days off and to prepare for my next group that came on Saturday. This group, Caprock Academy, is from Colorado, and I will be with them until Thursday. We will be headed to many different sites in Washington, D.C., as well as some that I have yet to visit with the group, such as the National Cathedral and the National Zoo. This will be a great learning experience to prep myself for when other groups visit these sites.

This week, I was with the Harris Road Middle School 8th grade class from North Carolina. This group used 6 buses, so there were several of us working together. Although it was one big group, we all were able to work individually and focus on the students on our bus. Throughout this experience, and especially this week, I have learned how to work with others, even as their approach to something may vary greatly from mine. For example, I like to have a plan before I do something, and tend to take a lot of time “perfecting” it. However, there were some other guides who preferred to go with the flow and handle the situation as time went along. I had to find a middle ground between this so that we could successfully work together. In addition, after working various hours, I feel that this experience will prepare me for any position that I will have in the future, as I will not only have the ability and experience of working a normal business day, but also have the experience of working for more 12 hours. So far, I am gaining more from this experience than I had originally anticipated.

Like many times after I have finished a group, I had a lot of time off this week, but still spent some time in the office. I began my week editing my congressional issues topics for CWF and then completing tasks around the office. In addition, I worked on preparing for my group coming next week. This group consist of an entire 8th grade class, so there will be 6 of us working together on one group. It is a great learning experience to work with other people and to see how we will approach situations. After our meeting in the middle of the week, I spent the rest of my time in the office printing name tags, looking up routes, and preparing myself for the group’s arrival.

Compared to the last two weeks, this one was rather busy, as I had two groups to lead around the city. My first group of the week was a group of students from the National 4-H Conference. For this group, I was only with them for the evening and led them around some of Washington D.C.’s most popular memorials and monuments. They were a fantastic group and very energetic! Next, I spent the latter portion of the week with Princeton Charter School, an 8th grade class from Princeton, New Jersey. This group had some of the most unique experiences, such as  talking with a guard for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery and meeting Supreme Court Justice Alito. These students were quite intelligent and asked a lot of insightful questions. So far, this group was the most rambunctious, which was something that had not happened with any of my previous groups. Still, it was a great learning experience and prepared me for a variety of situations.