Last Thursday, staff members of The Mentor staff and the Indian Insider participated in the Scholastic Press Corps State Fair competition in which they were able to get an unexpected interview with the state governor, Laura Kelly.

“[Meeting Kelly] wasn’t the original plan,” senior Meredith Comas said. “We had started coming up with what our ideas were because this was a competition to make a small little newspaper type thing in like a day. So, we were planning stories for what we were going to do with that.”

While meeting Kelly isn’t the most exciting thing in the world for some kids, these student journalists were ecstatic to meet an actual government official.

“[Kristy Nyp] our advisor was like ‘Laura Kelly’s here, we need to go [get an interview],” Comas said. “We sprinted all across the State Fair and I’m not a physical activity person and I sprinted.”

The students got the opportunity to see some of the daily activities that a state governor does on a normal day out in the public.

“It was just interesting seeing how meeting a government official works because I had to wait for her to finish what she was doing,” senior Hannah Heger said. “I had to go through a complete security check. I had to talk to the people helping secure and run her time at the State Fair. 

One thing some of the students were nervous about was actually meeting her and getting to know her personality as a politician. For some, it can be quite nerve-racking to meet someone with such a high understanding of how government and politics work, but when the students met Kelly, their opinions were changed.

“It was very casual actually,” junior Gavin Gaston said. “It wasn’t super formal super like, ‘Oh, you’re the governor,’ you know, it’s just like a sudden, ‘Oh, hi. It’s nice to meet you,’ sort of thing.”

The students enjoyed their time at the state fair. Their experience from meeting Kelly impacted some of their views on student journalism and journalism as a whole.

“We [student journalists] get in our head and say, ‘Well I can’t go talk to that person, they’re this big media person,’ when really it’s like these people that want to reach out to you,” Comas said. “It’s just a matter of putting yourself out there.”