For the Newbies

Hi, and welcome to the blog! I wanted to give a quick introduction, in order to set reasonable expectations and provide a general direction for readers. I'm Sam, a 20-something who just moved to Adams Morgan to start school at SAIS. I'll be pursuing concentrations in Latin American Studies and International Economics, with a specialization in Development Microeconomics. To be quite honest, I'm terrified of grad school. I'm doing a five-year accelerated BA/MA program, which means I just finished my junior year of undergrad, and will thus be one of the youngest members of my class, and will definitely have the bare minimum (read: three summer internships, only one of which earned me any money) of "real-world" experience. I'm also very excited, though, and will definitely keep you posted about school once it starts! For now, I'm interning at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank which conducts research and analysis to guide our nation's public policy to help low-income individuals and families. It's fun and inspiring and sometimes exhausting all at once, which I think makes it the perfect work environment.

So, about this blog. I'm sure it will evolve as time goes on, but for now the goals are the following:

• Provide real-life travel tips based on actual experiences, with some (hopefully) funny interjections that allow you to understand DC on a personal level
• Share tips about restaurants, sites, and events as I discover them
• Establish an easy-to-navigate source of information that doesn't require hourse spent on Google, Yelp, and Smithsonian websites

Thanks for reading, and welcome again! Contact me any time you have questions, suggestions, requests, or just want to chat.