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&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;8:00 AM&lt;/strong&gt;: Arrive at the office and start the morning with your daily&#160;review of the news wires to see what developments are afoot in the&#160;energy world:&#160; corporate merger rumors, congressional legislation&#160;proposals, updates on the latest accounting scandal, announcements&#160;by a foreign government about a new infrastructure project or&#160;environmental policy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9:00 AM&lt;/strong&gt;: Your phone rings – it’s a Legislative Assistant from a&#160;Congressperson’s office on &quot;the Hill.&quot;&#160; She wants to get more&#160;information about the press release your group issued last week,&#160;which called attention to an energy policy change you and your&#160;colleagues found buried in the latest congressional appropriation bill.&#160;This LA’s question is fairly detailed, so you pass her on to your legal&#160;specialist down the hall.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9:15 AM&lt;/strong&gt;: Your main task for today is to call and email a long list&#160;of local activist groups, congressional staff, and reporters, spreading&#160;your organization’s message about the harmfulness of the 11th-hour&#160;policy change that ended up in the appropriation bill.&#160; You start&#160;down the list with the reporters, hoping to get one of them to pick&#160;up the story for tomorrow’s paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;12:00 PM&lt;/strong&gt;: The policy director is going to lunch with someone&#160;from one of the foundations that funds your organization, and asks&#160;you to come along to discuss the initiatives you’ve been working on&#160;lately.&#160; While the energy policy bill is your latest overwhelming&#160;concern, this foundation wants to hear about work on the topics it&#160;earmarked its funds for:&#160; a recent campaign about municipal waste&#160;incineration emission standards, and an ongoing study about nuclear&#160;waste disposal alternatives (of which you are to be the primary&#160;author).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4:00 PM&lt;/strong&gt;: Fielding and placing calls related to last week&#39;s press&#160;release has taken up your whole afternoon.&#160; Now you carve out a&#160;few hours to work on background research for that nuclear waste&#160;study – you have a hefty reading list to get through, including a&#160;stack of company annual reports, magazine articles pulled from an&#160;online research database, and existing studies by other research&#160;organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;8:00 PM&lt;/strong&gt;: After a long day, you walk down the street to the&#160;neighborhood bar and have a few beers with your friends who work&#160;at other nonprofits.&#160; Your college roommate had emailed an invitation&#160;to a cocktail hour at a posh new lounge, but you declined in favor of&#160;$1 drafts.&#160; Sometimes it bothers you to not be able to keep up with&#160;your banker buddies’ lifestyles, but then again, you find your chosen&#160;career very fulfilling – while they chat over martinis about the&#160;prospect for a next promotion, you will enjoy an animated intellectual&#160;debate about the virtues of offshore windpower development.&lt;/p&gt;

Laura Chung Walker

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