It’s hard not to be overwhelmed walking into the White House. Just to think, I was standing in the building the aliens blew up in “Independence Day.”
But if I could be serious for a moment … OK, I’m done.
Anyhow, my path to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is, in many ways, similar to our president’s.
We both were raised by single parents who worked hard, struggled financially and hid our Kenyan birth. Yes, our story is as American as it gets.
When I got back to the office, I told my boss how hard it would have been for my high school teachers to imagine the kid they knew sitting in the White House press room during a briefing, or in the East Room, covering not one, but two U.S. presidents.
“I was a C student,” I said.
The truth is, I was being generous. My dad paid me for C’s.
Even now, school isn’t always my strong suit.
In a newswriting course, my professor, Keith King, gave one of my stories a score far below an “F” (AP style is the bane of my GPA) but wrote, “If you ever actually make it through this course, you’ll do great things.”