Local woman headed to White House; Obama meets with students
Saratoga Springs native Emily Langner has been selected as a participant of The White House Internship Program for the fall 2009 session.
The Wesleyan University student was one of about 100 college students selected from across the globe to take part in the program.
Interns work in one of several White House departments, including the Office of Cabinet Affairs, the Office of the Chief of Staff, the Office of the First Lady, and the Office of the Vice President, among others, according to a statement issued by The White House.
Applications for the spring 2010 internship program are available online. The deadline for entries is Sept. 20.
The news came on the same morning President Obama spent the better part of a half hour with ninth grade, first day of high school students in Arlington, Va.
Some of his comments, according to The White House:
- “I’m trying to remember back to my first day of high school. I can’t remember that far back…”
- “Despite the good home training I was getting, that when I was in 9th and 10th grade, I was still kind of a goof-off and I didn’t study as hard as I could have…Michelle, she was a good student the whole time. She was sort of a goody-two-shoes…”
- “I think that not having a dad in some ways forced me to grow up faster. It meant that I made more mistakes because I didn’t have somebody to tell me, here’s how you do this or here’s how you do that. But on the other hand, I had to, I think, raise myself a little bit more. I had to be more supportive of my mother because I knew how hard she was working. And so, in some ways, maybe it made me stronger over time.”
- Responding to a student’s question about how his life has changed: “In terms of my own personal life, I think the biggest change is that I’m inside what’s called the bubble. I can’t just do things on the spur of the moment.”
- Another question: If you could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be? Answer: “Gandhi.”
- And another: How do you motivate yourself to do all the work that goes along with your job? Answer: “Some of it is just you don’t want to fail, right? A lot of people are counting on me.”
– Thomas Dimopoulos
