House Page Program

This is a picture of my best friends in the entire world. Yes, I do mean pretty much all of them and I can name every single person in this picture. These were the kids of the Fall 2009 United States House of Representatives Page class. Being a Page was the event that had the biggest impact in my life, up to this point. As a Page we worked for the United States House of Representatives doing basically whatever they need. For example, bringing papers from the Congressional office buildings near the Capitol to the House floor. We lived in a dorm a few blocks from the Capitol and went to school in the Library of Congress attic, but those things weren't what made this program have such a large impact on my life.

Being forced to live with 63 teenagers that you've never meet before, being no where near your family at 16, and being forced to work as a team with those same teenagers caused a lot of interesting things to happen. I don't think I've ever gotten closer to anyone as quickly as I got close to those kids. Literally, after about two weeks we would all go out together and no one would feel left out or like they didn't belong. It was almost like we bonded so quickly and deeply because if we didn't then we wouldn't have "survived".

The people there were from a wide range of backgrounds, races, places, and personalities, but it was almost as if we all shared something bigger than all of that. The way that we became close friends was based on all of our basic belief that you should truly care about your friends and that no one should feel like they can't come talk to you and spend time with you.

I should mention that I only knew these kids for 6 months, but in that time we became so close that when had to leave we were all distraught because we didn't know how we were going to live without each other. It was coming back from this experience that made me really see what I big impact it had on my life. I came back expecting to find everyone truly caring for each other and being able to talk to and spend time with anyone, but that obviously didn't happen. I haven't found a group like that since. I realized that it was a special group of people that I spent 6 months with, but I also realized that regardless of what others thought, I was going to carry those traits with me, which is a huge change from who I was before that program.

Because I chose to continue having those traits, I lost a lot of people who I had previously been friends with before the program. But I also made a lot of new friends and meet the love of my life because of it. I think that the way those 63 teenagers treated each other and treated me changed me forever and I know that the life I am living would be completely different without it.

On a side note, this program got cancelled almost 3 months ago and I can't image all of the lives that will not be changed for the better because they don't have this amazing opportunity.