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Through interning for the Departments of Planning and Economic Development at City Hall this summer, I not only learned so much about the history and planning of Saratoga Springs, but have become aware of the city’s many current develop-ments, and the process and challenges involved with bringing in businesses, and making Saratoga more safe and sustainable.

I was fortunate enough to work with planners that also exposed me what is involved in urban planning and local govern-ment, through bringing me along on site visits, workshops, and meetings, and engaging me in interesting conversations on city planning, Saratoga, and even life after college. This internship has been worthwhile for how much I’ve learned about Saratoga alone, but has also been incredibly helpful not only in informing me about how communities change, and the role that the public sector plays, but also about the work I’d like to do with the interests and skills that this experience, and others at Skidmore, have given me.

The beginning of my internship was focused on the history of Saratoga, and its virtues over time, as I composed an appli-cation on Broadway for the American Planning Association’s award for “Greatest Streets.” I reviewed old documents, photo-graphs, and videos, which involved reaching out to different departments and associations to acquire such archival materials. It was fascinating learning about Saratoga’s development, changes, and preservation, and the planning, codes, and community ef-forts that have made it what it is today, and what it was years ago. Doing this project made me familiar with the structure of grant writing, while also allowing me to be creative, as I took photographs of buildings across Broadway, and constructed a Pow-erPoint as a supplement to the application.

I helped write a grant for a waterfront park on Saratoga Lake, and am currently doing research for a grant that would allow for a safer route to schools. In addition, I attend meetings on energy conservation, and businesses that will be coming in to Saratoga. My project for the rest of the internship was to creating a plan for the departments to move all of their maps and plans to a system online, which made them much more accessible and organized.

I am so glad that before leaving Saratoga, after graduating from Skidmore, I have had the opportunity to learn more about the city, especially since it is a great model for urban planning, and that it has given me the skills to continue working in other communities. I am very grateful to have had this opportunity.

Had I not had the fortune of taking GO102 Introduction to Political Philosophy and GO304 Modern Political Thought (both taught by Professor Timothy Burns), I would not have had the courage to pick up—or the ability to understand with any degree of confidence—Hannah Arendt’s philosophic work The Human Condition . This fall, halfway through that book, I received funding from Skidmore’s Student Opportunity Fund to attend a conference at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. The conference, concerned with the influence of the presidency in contemporary politics, focused heavily on the nature of what Ar-endt called “action,” or the particularly human activity of political deliberation. In her conception of action, Arendt emphasizes the unpredictability of political life, a result of the irrepressible individuality of each member of the polis. This unpredictability, she contends, has the potential to produce miracles.

The conference featured a variety of speakers, ranging from Arendt specialists to theory professors and activists, includ-ing Ralph Nader and Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Doctors Without Borders. Each speaker approached differently the ques-tion of the presidency, some in agreement with Arendt that great statesmanship is still possible, others giving voice to another side of Arendt, contending that the citizenry, not the president, is the body to whom we must look for political leadership. I found most enlightening speaker Jeffrey Tulis, professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of The Rhetorical Presiden-cy . He illuminated the inherent tension between the rule of one, however “great” or well intended, and the rule of many, operat-ing through democratic deliberation. Tulis contended that the president, if he is to respect the Constitution, is to be no more than the representative of an already formed opinion of the people. To the extent that he rules independently of the people, he undermines their freedom, doing more harm in the long run than could come from any short-term good of presidential heroism—the exception, of course, being wartime.