I got an Instagram DM from a college buddy last week, in response to one of my columns I’d posted. We’d both worked on the opinion section of the Washington State University newspaper – the Daily Evergreen – together, which was the first experience I’d ever had writing for an actual institution. “You found your voice,” he wrote. “Now we must all suffer the consequences.”

He went on to ask who else from our year was actually working for a news outlet. I responded that I knew a few people were working in Washington, writing for the Seattle Times or the Spokesman Review, and succeeding in doing actual Who/What/When/Where/Why journalism. “But,” I said, “I think I’m having the most fun.”

He agreed.

Political writing rocks, especially if you’re unconstrained by things like “word count” and “style,” and are, instead, given essentially free rein to attend committee meetings, interview legislators, and drink copiously, while trying to relay the overall atmosphere of a capital city 600 miles from everything, to an increasingly displeased audience at home. It is, to quote a certain unnamed Louisville journalist, “better than sex.” A press pass, used responsibly, is like the secret word from “Eyes Wide Shut” – though, to be clear, I haven’t yet witnessed any masquerade billionaire debauchery parties.

On Friday, my last day in Juneau, I watched the House and Senate Resource Committee meetings, where public testimony was opened for HJR 6 and SJR 7, respectively. Both joint resolutions were introduced in support of development within the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, and to urge President Joe Biden and the Department of the Interior to approve the Willow Project. Impassioned pleas were levied towards the committees in both meetings, mostly against the resolution.

Representative Josiah Patkotak (I – Utqiagvik) – the House resolution’s main sponsor – testified at each meeting in support of his bill, arguing that more development would lead to a higher quality of life for villages in the area. A friend of his, he said, had been able to drop his home heating bill from $700 a month with diesel to $25 a month, after natural gas infrastructure had been put in place. It was a concrete benefit, directly tied back to increased extraction.

350 Juneau, a climate action group, was the main public contributor against the resolutions, making vague references to renewable energy plans. In the House meeting, public testimony for each person was limited to 90 seconds or less, and in the Senate, it was limited to one minute. It was entertaining, from an onlooker’s perspective to see Juneau bluehairs and phone callers alike try to cram their message into a short length of time. Was there a certain amount of schadenfreude from yours truly? Perhaps – especially considering that on Monday, HJR 6 passed the House 36-0.

This is, more than anything, the draw of being a political columnist. Watching these committee meetings unfold, you begin to see the human drama involved in passing legislation. It lends a certain amount of comedy and tragedy to what most would consider exceedingly dry affairs of state. Alaska politics, if you look at it from the right angle, lends itself more to Coen Brothers plot points than anything self-seriously written by Aaron Sorkin or Beau Willimon.

Even the flight out of Juneau was its own final punchline – delayed by two hours, I drank overpriced Heinekens in the airport bar and watched people file into the gate to wait for a flight back to Anchorage. It was a cross section of everyone I’d met up to that point, in some way – a few representatives and senators, a number of staffers, and some lobbyists.

There’s a battered reporter’s notebook I’ve been carrying around this past month, and if I flip through it, it’s a nearly note perfect story of my experience in Juneau, in sort of an abstract sense. Cryptic notes and references to things I need to look up, strange liquid stains, coverage of committee meetings, a few pages ripped in half or gone entirely. When my handwriting gets worse or unreadable entirely over the course of a page, I know that’s because it was probably from a night out.

In a short month, I have met staffers, lobbyists, legislators, lawyers, union reps, directors of state institutions large and small, and everyone in between. Mixed into this conglomeration are a number of people who, even after a month, I would consider friends – I would hope they know who they are. As always, I’m infinitely grateful to my editor, the incorrigible Jeff Landfield, for giving a 22-year-old political science failson a shot.

I’m back in Anchorage now, waiting on the results of a job interview. If they turn me down, I’ll be back in the capital city towards the end of the session, to cover what I’ve been told is a madhouse of last-minute legislation, deal-making, and public freakouts. If you have a hot scoop and absolutely have to get it out into the public eye, get in touch.

The fun you can have as a writer is virtually unlimited if you know how to do it, and it’s something that I don’t think can be taught – at least, not by me. I think I might be incapable of working a straight job, which may be cause for concern down the road, but I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it. All I can hope is that, for the short while I was doing political coverage, I was able to entertain some, inform others, and annoy many. Based on the feedback I’ve received, I think I got pretty close.

Stay woke,

Jake “The Intern” Hersh