Virginia Girls State, part 3

During the week, we had the opportunity to take a class. I did not get my first choice of class, Public Speaking, and ended up in a much better class, Women in Government. I am glad that I ended taking this class, because I got to meet some of the greatest ladies that help run this great Commonwealth.

On the first day, I got there early, and got a front row seat. I was excited. The first person to speak to us was Kate Hanley, Secretary of the Commonwealth. Throughout her "lecture" she gave many statistics. The numbers that she gave compel me even more to one day run for public office. The United States ranks 71st in the amount of women that hold public office. Two percent of the US Congress is women, there are 17 in the Senate and 72 in the House. In the state of Virginia, there are 8 in the State Senate and 16 in the House of Delegates. The greatest quote that I got out of the whole "lecture" was "Every father's daughter can be President." She also told us that in politics, men and women have different rules. Surprisingly, there was a lot of discussion about clothes. There were three points that were made that we should know. If a female politician reads, understands, and explains numbers, it could translate into votes. Just because you're a women, you can't make it everything about "women's issues", education, health care, etc. Also that when it comes to campaigning you have to be able to prove that you can do it on your own.
The second person that talked to us on the first day was Claire Gastanaga. The overarching theme of her "lecture" was, "Do you have a prefect enough life to run for public office?" Which is something that I think about everyday. As I'm making decisions, the question in the back of my head is, "I could be running for public office one day, would this harm me in the future?"
The last speaker of the day, was probably one of my favorite speakers of the entire class, Nancy Rodrigues, Secretary of the State Board of Elections. She has the job of making sure that every vote is counted, which has to be a very big burden. The one thing that stands out the most, is that afterwards we were talking, and she told me a story about Congressman Perriello.

The second and third day of my Women in Government class don't have very detailed notes, partly because I was nervous about giving my speech, and partly because a lot of the same things were said over and over again.
A few key quotes from day 2 are: "Women come to government not with a personal agenda, but to help others." I would hope that this wasn't only true about women, but men also. For some reason, I didn't write who said it, but I did for the other one. Jane Woods came and spoke to us for a little while, and a key quote from her was, "There isn't one yellow brick road." I believe that this is true for all walks of life, not just politics. The last quote that made me think a lot is something that I believe also pertains to every walk of life. It's about fighting for ideas, not about fighting other people.

Unfortunately, I did not have to opportunity to go to my class on the last two days, I had a cabinet meeting and then inauguration practice.