NORWICH – Norwich High School junior, Houston Edwards, recently spent the day in Albany shadowing Senator Fred Akshar.

Edwards had first met Akshar while volunteering at community events. He said he started following the Senator on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. After seeing photos of the things the Senator was doing at the Capital and in the community, Edwards reached out to see if he could see those things first hand.

"I've always had an interest in politics, and how the government works," said Edwards

Originally, Edwards requested to shadow Akshar while he was in the Chenango County area. But he was excited to learn that Akshar felt it would be more beneficial for him to come to the capital and sit in on a legislature meeting.

"I was like wow, because I never thought that you could go and do that and watch. Because you don't see on the news, even like for the United States (legislature meetings), you don't see like random people in there just watching. I was getting more excited as the days went by and leading up to it," said Edwards.

"(The meeting) was pretty fast paced and at times hard to understand. They were voting too, what I interpreted it as, continuing laws for the next year. So there was a law that was approved last year and they just voted to continue it through this year," said Edwards.

Not only did he get to sit in on legislative meeting, he spent the entire day with Senator Akshar, watching how he dealt with community issues.

"I got to sit through some of his meetings with activists from the Binghamton area for after school activities. The day before I went there the governor announced his budget for New York State and there was some cut to funding for after school activities for public schools. There were people from an organization that represented those people to talk to the senator about if they could get that money back or at least why they cut that and where the money was going," said Edwards.

After sitting in on the meeting with the activists, Edwards was taken on a tour of the Capital building. He then sat through a conference call with local police officials to schedule a press conference on the new bail reform laws. Edwards was impressed and surprised by the amount of effort it takes to work at the Capital.

"You only see what happens in government on the news. I didn't know how much actually went on and how hard their job is. Senator Akshar told me that he usually leaves his house around five in the morning and doesn't get home until eleven at night. To have to debate, and go over all these bills, and read everything - I never knew how difficult their job is," said Edwards.

Although Edwards was able to experience many new and exciting things while at the Capital, there was one moment that stood out to him.

"He's a really big community activist and a lot of his stuff is for people with disabilities. One of the biggest things he does is support people with disabilities. We were going to an elevator and there was a few handicapped people and he stopped, stopped all of us with him, to thank them for their work. That was really impactful for me. Not a lot of people stop and take the time thank the people who represent them and I thought that was really cool," said Edwards.