Internship: Q&A with the Carters

Korrin B.

July 24, 2010 - 6:50 PM

This Friday marked the first departure of some of the summer interns. Those who started on May 18 finished their internships. Before everyone begins to depart, however, we had one more big event that was planned for us. Friday was our question and answer session with President and Mrs. Carter.

President and Mrs. Carter came into Atlanta on Friday to the main Center to meet with us. We all dressed in our professional best and filled our conference room. Mrs. Carter was the first one to arrive. She started us off by talking about her interest in mental health issues and how she got started with it. When President Carter joined her a few minutes later, he started speaking to us by sharing some statistics with us on our internship class. He said that we had been chosen from about 600 applicants and that together we fluently spoke 12 different languages. He told us that The Carter Center has had about 1,000 interns from about 80 different universities since it began its program. President Carter seemed very pleased and invested in the internship program.

Next came the questions. The Carters had very thorough answers to each question, so we were only able to get in about six before our time was up. I enjoyed hearing Mrs. Carter talk so passionately about the mental health program she helped start when she was asked a question about it. I am interested in this program as it greatly relates to my interest in homelessness.

My favorite part, however, was probably when someone asked President and Mrs. Carter what their advice would be for a student graduating who wasn't entirely sure what he or she wanted to do. President Carter's advice was to join the Peace Corps, but the answer extended beyond that simple response. Both President and Mrs. Carter began to talk about the importance in taking the time while we are our age to just enjoy life and do all of the things that we may not be able to do as easily when we get older. They suggested traveling as much as we could. Mrs. Carter probably put it the best when she said that now is the time to explore and have fun and travel because eventually you will have a family or a career or something that makes it harder to just get up and go. I think this was important for me to hear as I approach my own graduation and try to find the balance between a hefty appetite to travel and high ambitions for excellent work experience. President Carter said that if you graduate and completely know that you want to go to graduate school for something or take a particular job, that that's great, but that if it isn't like that, it is fine to just explore and take advantage of being young.

After our question and answer time was over, President Carter jokingly told us all to get back to work. Before actually doing so, we all got in line and went through for our individual photos with the Carters. You only got one chance and if you blinked, they just take your solo picture again later and Photoshop your unblinking face into the picture. It all had to be done very quickly, as the Carters keep to a pretty tight schedule. I know at least that I didn't blink in my photo, but we'll have to wait and see how it turned out! We also had a group picture taken with the two of them.