Last week marked the last day of my internship here at ACYPL. Over the past several months, I have been lucky enough to spend my days in the office helping prepare the materials delegates receive at the beginning of an exchange with ACYPL, which mostly consists of gathering biographical information on the delegates and researching the places delegations will visit. In doing so, I have been consistently blown away by resumes of the young leaders from around the world. I also learned about the governments, cities, and cultural sites on our exchanges and thus was constantly adding destinations to my travel dream list.

During the time delegations are in DC for their orientation meetings and briefings, I had the opportunity to sit in on meetings at the State Department, on the Hill, corporations like Boeing, Coca-Cola, and BP, and much more. Although these meetings are meant to teach ACYPL’s international delegates about American government and politics, I probably learned just as much as they did! Meeting delegates from around America and the world was constantly exciting and fascinating, and coming home with little trinkets from China or Malaysia or Russia always made me happy.

It was the ACYPL staff themselves, however, who really made this internship experience so amazing. I came into this internship expecting to gain new skills and learn as much as I could, but I could not have asked for nicer office mates and mentors. The ACYPL staff are some of the nicest and friendliest people I have ever worked with and I loved getting to know them, chatting about TV shows and yummy DC restaurants, and celebrating office birthdays with delicious cupcakes. Thank you ACYPL!

Jenny Bright is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin, and an ACYPL intern from August 2014 – May 2015.