What does that mean over there? "Tweet"? Is that where you can be a nit-twit or whatever? Well, if you are, follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/therealmarklane

Part of the reason I was chosen to write for The Washington Center was so I could give my perspective on my experience here as part of an orientation to prospective students. Well, I think that it would be unbecoming of my objectivity if I were to simply present only the good about my experience here in the nation's capital. Don't worry; I'm not going to offer some scandalous story. It's nothing like that. What I'm trying to do is prepare --

Well, I figured out what was wrong with my posting pictures on this site. Apparently, you can only post pictures up to 1 megabyte and all of my pictures were above that limit due to the high resolution setting I put on my camera. But I figured away around it.

Like all of us, I often compare myself to characters in the media or have been compared to such characters by my friends. My comparison filmography would include characters from Luke Skywalker (mine: the hair, stature) to Michael Corleone (mine: the suits, stature, third son) to Adam from "Blast From the Past" (family: the naivety) to Elliot from "Bedazzled" (Bran Flakes: the moral perplexities, or maybe just my current hairstyle at the time we met) to a sort of anti-Holden Caulfield (mine) where instead of finding out the bad about everyone, I seek out the good.

Maybe someone should write an update to the famous Led Zepplin song and talk about escalators. Anyway, so, there I was at the bottom of the escalator in the Federal Center SW Metro station. Above me, by about 60 feet, was Independence Avenue. On that street and about a block west was Voice of America, my internship site.