Sarah Elfreth is headed to school on Tuesday.

Elected the new representative of Maryland’s 3rd District, Elfreth is joining other first-time congressional winners around the nation in Washington for 11 days of tours, lunches, dinners and seminars. She’ll get a 300-page guide on being a member. She’ll learn rules on classified documents and bill writing. She’ll get an office through a lottery, then it will be painted and rekeyed.

Next month, the self-described policy nerd will head to Harvard University for even more orientation, this time on the nation’s most pressing issues as defined by the Kennedy School of Government.

After all this — a year of campaigning and fundraising, of juggling her roles as a state senator and new dog owner — Elfreth will take the oath of office Jan. 3 as a member of the 119th Congress.

It’s not everything she wanted.

“Yesterday was rough,” she said Thursday of the national results. “It’s not what I was pushing for.”

Normally, a postelection talk with a victorious candidate might begin with her victory party. OK. Here it is.

Several hundred supporters, friends and political allies cheered when state Sen. Pamela Beidle introduced Elfreth as the congresswoman from the 3rd District at her victory party in a meeting hall outside Annapolis.

Elfreth repeated the story of how she decided to run for the state Senate after Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, of never wanting to wake up after an election again and wish she had done more.

“And this morning — we’re all a little superstitious as candidates — I voted at 7 a.m. on Election Day. I got to vote for women up and down the ballot,” she told the crowd. “It proves to us that, while progress isn’t promised, it’s possible. It’s possible.”

Mostly.

Instead of joining the majority party supporting the first woman president, Elfreth goes to Washington with Trump returned to power and Republicans in control of the Senate and likely holding a thin majority in the House.

Instead of advancing reproductive rights, gun safety or environmental priorities, Elfreth expects to become a check on Trump’s aggressive right-wing agenda.

There are consolations: Getting elected to Congress at age 36 is a significant achievement, and so is being the first member from Annapolis in 60 years.

Elfreth is likely to find allies among a wave of new members of Congress who bring histories of climate activism from their home states. If Trump repeats his first-term attempt to end federal support for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, Elfreth, the former chair of the multistate bay commission, will be a major voice against it.

If resistance to a woman president played a role in Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat, Elfreth’s win showed Maryland is different.

Angela Alsobrooks is headed to the Senate. April McClain-Delaney will join Elfreth and Johnny Olszewski Jr. as new members in the House. The results are the largest share of delegation seats women have won in Maryland, ending an all-male era that began in 2016.

“Maryland really supports women in office,” Elfreth said.

Her election will change how Elfreth approaches her job.

She’s about to go from the sometimes clubby State House in Annapolis, where she developed a reputation in six years as a prolific legislator, to a place where Sarbanes passed two bills in his 18 years in the House.

“I could be there for the next 50 years and not get 91 bills through the way I’ve done here,” Elfreth said. “So it’s about redefining our definition of success.”

She’ll increase her focus on money. Elfreth filled the role invented by her mentor, the late House Speaker Mike Busch, as funder-in-chief for Annapolis. The small-town capital city has far greater needs than revenues. Now, that job will expand to a wider area with more needs.

“I’ve always defined part of my success in the State House as bringing money home and, God willing, [budget] earmarks continue in Congress, that’s something I can still be successful at — bringing money back to the district,” she said.

After a competitive primary, she faced a weak Republican in the fall election. That let her start building her office early.

Elfreth already has a chief of staff. She’s picking up field office representatives from retiring Sen. Ben Cardin and the three departing House members: Dutch Ruppersberger, David Trone and Sarbanes.

She’ll use them to focus on constituent services across Anne Arundel, Howard and Carroll, the three counties that comprise her district.

“We’ve talked about success as, obviously, stellar constituent services, being really competitive with [service] academy nominations and figuring out, like, how do I get more.”

The Maryland departures from the House open up a seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee and two on Appropriations — the big-money committee.

“I will never get appropriations as a freshman,” Elfrelth said.

But she could get the Armed Services Committee, which passes the National Defense Authorization Act annually. Amendments to it can be as significant as standalone legislation. It also could be a place where Republicans start the next phase of their war on a “woke” military.

She’s talked to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries — the New York Democrat who’s either the House speaker or minority leader come January — about replacing Ruppersberger on the Naval Academy Board of Visitors.

“It wouldn’t kill anybody to have more women,” she said.

A question for Elfreth is whether her new role will change her.

Maryland’s part-time legislature meets in session for just 90 days. Elections are held once every four years.

Even if Elfreth stamped her personality with the office of state senator, there was still time for Sarah the fan of the piano bar upstairs at Middleton Tavern.

Congress meets year-round, and members constantly focus on the next election. They are assured of their importance regularly by people at home, voices in Washington, and power brokers of all stripes who want a few moments of their time.

Elfreth will stay in Annapolis and commute to D.C. If she has to, she’ll sleep on her couch after late nights.

She’ll try to spend so much time in Howard County that its residents forget she doesn’t live there.

It’s all pulling her in a new direction. On top of that, on top of all the lessons in that 300-page manual on being a congresswoman, she has one more job: Remaining Sarah Elfreth.

”I’ll have an easier job than some of my colleagues who spend a significant amount of time on planes,” she said.