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AACC 'Star Student' Goes to Washington

"President Obama reached out his hand to greet me and I blurted out 'I love you,'" said Marlena Clark, a graduate of Anne Arundel County Community College.

Marlena Clark asked her boss if she could leave work early Thursday, but she had a really great reason.

during President Barack Obama’s nationally televised jobs creation and economic growth address to a joint session of Congress.

“I’m really trying to come up with the perfect word to describe my experience, but that word hasn’t been invented yet,” Clark said Friday from her office at Force3 in Crofton. “I still have goose bumps thinking about it. I will remember this forever and forever. I am so thankful.”

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Clark’s trip to Washington, DC—actually as the guest of Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden—came together in about 24 hours and at first she thought it was a prank.

“I stayed on the phone just in case it wasn’t,” she said about the first call from Jill Biden’s office Wednesday afternoon.

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The behind-the-scenes planning started Tuesday when Jill Biden’s office called (AACC) and asked for the names of some “star students"—successful, non-traditional scholars who trained to go back into the workforce.

“We gave her office the names of many successful students who had trained across a number of our academic programs,” said Dan Baum, AACC’s director of public relations and marketing. “We had many from which to chose. They were all good stories.”

Clark, now 30, graduated from AACC in 2010 from the college’s Information Systems Security program and is a systems engineer at Force3. She worked two jobs while taking classes and completing an internship.

“I wanted more than what my minimum wage jobs were providing,” Clark said of her decision to return to college.

When Clark was picked, Jill Biden’s office called Baum asking him to contact her about “an exciting opportunity and if she was interested, the White House would be calling.”

When he passed on the rather cryptic message, he said Clark had a long pause and said, “I guess my day is not going to go the way I planned.”

After taking the call from Jill Biden’s office, a White House staffer called her to make all the arrangements. Clark also was able to take her husband with her, although he stayed at the White House during Obama’s speech. Clark arrived in Washington, DC, about 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon.

“I am just a regular person so I drove myself there and parked about a block from the White House,” she said. “I then walked up to the gate. After checking IDs, they let us in at exactly 4:15 like they said they would.”

Once in the White House, the group of 24 invitees and their guests were treated to a reception and the opportunity to meet Michelle Obama.

“When it was my turn, every word I know left me,” Clark said of meeting the first lady. “I was crying and bumbling and she hugged me.”

Prior to the speech, the guests were taken to the Capitol and once seated in the first lady’s box, Clark found out that Jill Biden was seated right next to her. Michelle Obama was three seats away and asked her if she was OK after their meeting at the White House. After the speech, the guests were taken to meet President Obama.

“I was walking towards him and with about three feet to go my feet just stopped," Clark said. "I couldn’t get them to move. President Obama reached out his hand to greet me and I blurted out ‘I love you.’”

The Obamas may remember Clark as much she remembers her incredible evening. The guests were not allowed to take any photos but many were taken by White House photographers and will be sent a couple of weeks.

“The Obamas are just so beautiful and genuine,” Clark said. Asked what she will remember most of the evening, she added, “The way they made me feel when in their presence even when I was at a loss for words. I feel like I won the lottery.”

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