Fresh from a semester-long job as a Page for Senator Thad Cochran, Brookhaven High School Junior, Daniel Clark returned to his hometown with four awards and unforgettable stories from the experience.

During a humbling award ceremony on Jan. 16, the last day of the job, Clark received the Physics Award – which he shared with another recipient – the Political Science Award, the English Composition Award and the Citizenship award that goes to the Page that was really devoted to the job. There were 29 pages in Clark’s class.

“I love history, and I loved being there seeing history being made,” Clark said reminiscing about events that went on during the job and specifically remembers the events after the release of the torture report. “I was there when people were protesting and security was dragging them out.”

Clark said the experience, although hard, was very informative.

“There were tons of people there with very different views,” Clark said. “It was really enlightening. I definitely changed a bit of my views.”

Clark said the school and job had he and his colleagues waking up at 4:45 a.m. then school at 6:15 a.m. then work after school.

“It requires a lot of autonomy. It makes you grow up pretty fast,” Clark said.

He said he had to do his own laundry, buy and make his own food and budget the money he got paid for the job.

He shared the key to managing his time was keeping a day planner. He said he made study guides for he and other pages to help himself study.

“You have to stick together when you’re working 40 to 60 hours a week,” Clark said.

Senate pages are primarily responsible for delivering correspondence and legislative materials to lawmakers within the U.S. Capitol complex. In addition, pages help prepare the Senate chamber for sessions and serve all 100 Senators while the Senate is deliberating. Clark shared memorable moments from such sessions. He recalled being called in on a Saturday for voting on a constitutional point of order involving 14 hours of non-stop work. Clark said that although it was 14 hours of hard work he shared that the senators were cracking jokes and they “got to see a more human aspect of the senators.”

In what he said was probably his best memory there, Clark recalled during a lull in the same 14-hour day of voting, he got to experience senators singing Christmas carols and Senator Cochran playing the piano in the Democratic cloak room.

Other stories include pizza partying with senators and a tribe of Native American people protesting in the gallery during talks around the Keystone Pipeline.

Now that this experience is over for him, Clark said he’s on the lookout for other opportunities, but he’ll “definitely be working on some campaigns this summer.”