Good evening, Delegates! We hope everyone enjoyed their first committee sessions and learned lots from the speakers and our peers around us.

To start our morning, we held our first General Assembly of the 2023 Colorado Youth in Government session. The meeting began with the reciting of the pledge and prayer. We then welcomed our first guest speaker Justice Melissa Heart. First, Justice Heart spoke to us about some of her past work and her journey to where she currently is in her career. She then gave great advice about being intentional in knowing the why behind our actions in all that we do. Including our careers, our home lives, and the way that we treat each other.

The next speech was given by Hanna Skandera, who informed us about her background in education and public policy. She started off as a business major and later realized she wanted to become more than that, so she went back to school and pursued her master’s in public policy. She is a former Secretary of Education in New Mexico and is currently the CEO of Daniels Fund, which is a private charitable foundation that offers scholarships to students, and other financial aid to citizens in Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming communities. Hanna gave us great words of advice on how to get involved and what we can do to make a difference in the future. She reminded us of the fact that hard work can get us very far places. Most importantly, she reminded us that we need to know and be confident in our convictions and beliefs so we understand where we can compromise and where we cannot.

After our first General Assembly, we moved into our committee chamber sessions, and later on lunch.

After lunch, we moved into our second General Assembly of the day. Our speaker was former Senator Lundberg. He reminded us of a few very important things. First, find your nonnegotiables and stay true to those throughout your life and career. On the flip side, find the ideas with which you are willing to negotiate, similar to what our Speaker Hanna Skandera reminded us of this morning.

Well, that was all for today. Thank you everyone for continuing to be adaptable to ever-changing things as we are not in the Capitol. Tomorrow we have the Governor’s Ball, the Governor’s Cabinet announcement, and a lot more learning to do! Don’t forget to get in our Officer Applications to Marlana by tomorrow at lunch, and also check out our newest release of the Capitol Chronicles if you have not received a copy.

See you tomorrow!

Tate Maddox, Editor in Chief