Thursday with Trumans.

Today a group of really nervous college juniors are interviewing for the Truman Scholarship. Last night I hosted a dinner for them in Washington, D.C. at Asia Nine to introduce them to area Truman Scholars. It's a pretty casual event, and we had about two dozen finalists and scholars gathered together for the event.

This photo is from the restaurant's website. I'm embarrassed to be a blogger sometimes when I'm with a new crowd, so I stole one of their photos. Asia Nine was a great spot for the dinner, a true miracle in DC because they willingly split the checks for 24 people. The service was wonderful, food was hot, and we were able to visit around our large table easily. They had several vegetarian options, which is good, because the Truman lot tends to include quite a few vegetarians. Remind me to tell you about the time that I hosted a finalist dinner at Jack Stack BBQ in Kansas City. BBQ restaurants are not vegetarian friendly. Whoops.

The scholars have a lot of fun telling the finalists about what we do in our real jobs, because very few of us actually do what we said we would do in our Truman proposals back in the day. According to my plan, I would have taught three years and then pursued a degree in education policy, probably at Stanford or Harvard. HA. Even on the days where students make me really really frustrated, I wouldn't want to trade my job for a policy position.

I might trade it for a fountain machine and an unlimited supply of diet coke. Like 7-11 or QuikTrip with every option being diet coke. All the time. Yeah, that's a tempting trade.

Conversation is always fun at these events. I love to hear about the things the finalists are doing as undergraduates - it makes me hopeful for the future. It should make you excited too. Water filters in Bangladesh, education standards reform, social entrepreneurship with rats and land mines - this is cool stuff.

I trade their cool adventures with harrowing stories of 8th graders in Kansas and Virginia and a few funny anecdotes from my application days. Like the fact that I watched "The Newlyweds" with Jessica Simpson before my interview. Or I like to tell them that during my interview the panel asked if I had ever been to the Teaching Hall of Fame in Emporia. And I lied and said yes.

Hopefully it helped one of the finalists that was nervous this morning, and he or she said, "If the girl who watched the Newlyweds and lied during her interview could win the Truman, then surely I can too."

Dream big America.