Sophomore Mary Kate Collins likes option C. Especially when her choices are A and B.
This summer Collins will be an intern at the Tennessee State Library and Archives.
“My Dad initially emailed me an article from The Tennessean newspaper; he thought it was something I would be interested in,” Collins said.
The article described the TSLA’s plans for research projects on old Tennessee Supreme Court cases dating back to the 1960s.
“As a history major, I was very interested in that,” Collins said. “In the article, there was a malpractice suit and they had in the boxes the actual sponge found in the body. They have all that out there, just sitting. And I have the opportunity to go play with it.”
Collins said that over Christmas break she emailed the head of the TSLA, Chuck Sherrill, to inquire if they were accepting interns for the summer.
Unfortunately, Sherill said they did not take interns and they did not have the funds to supply one. But Collins said she did not let it stop her.
“In true Collins fashion, I proceeded to email my state senator, Jack Johnson, and my state representative, Glen Casada,” Collins said.
Although she did not hear anything back from Casada, she managed to show up on Johnson’s radar.
“Johnson said he would be interested in sending a letter of recommendation to the secretary of state,” Collins said.
Soon after, Collins said she received a call from Secretary of State Tre Hargett’s assistant requesting Collins to meet for an interview.
“Honestly, it was his assistant who called me and in my head, I didn’t know who was calling me because I didn’t know who Tre Hargett was,” Collin’s said. “I didn’t send anything to him.”
Collins said she did not know where her interview would be or who would interview her until 9:30 the night before the interview was to take place.
Collins learned who would interview her by calling back a number for her interviewer and waiting for the answering machine to pick up. The machine said Secretary of State Tre Hargett.
“I actually wasn’t nervous at all,” Collins said. “I remember calling my dad the next morning and him wishing me good luck and telling me not to be nervous. I told him, ‘First of all, I don’t believe in luck. And second of all, [Hargett] should be the one nervous, because this is about to walk into his office.'”
If Collins was nervous at all, she curbed those nerves.
“I walked up the front steps of the capital building singing Mulan’s, ‘I’ll Make a Man Out of You,'” Collins said. “I [went] into the capitol building and prematurely walked through the metal detector, and got escorted back out.”
After Collins was finished being searched, she was led to Hargett’s office, where he grilled her about her resume and her passions.
“I had no idea how I did because essentially I was having to go in there and tell the secretary of state that he needed to [use] the tax dollars of Tennessee and tell the state library to make up an internship for me,” Collins said. “It was a little disheartening, but I was still pretty confident because … I’m Mary Kate Collins.”
About an hour and a half after the interview, Collins received another phone call.
“It was Chuck Sherrill, head of the Tennessee State Library and Archives,” Collins said. “He said, ‘I heard you wowed the secretary of state this morning.’ I just started laughing. Then I told myself, ‘Mary Kate, contain yourself, this is your future boss you’re talking to.'”
Collins said she earned a full-time paid internship for the summer and because the TSLA did not have any type of template for an internship, she was given the choice to decide what she wanted to do with it.
In the course of one week, Collins contacted her state representative, interviewed with her secretary of state, met with the head of the Tennessee State Library and Archives and created her own internship.
“God said, ‘Here Mary Kate, let me open this door for you,'” Collins said. “Which was 100 percent what it was. I don’t have any of these requirements. This was a God thing.”
Collins said she will spend her summer helping academics with their research, archiving old Tennessee Supreme Court cases, mapping immigration patterns and microfilming old documents.
“I’ll even have my own cubicle,” Collins said. “And hopefully a picture of me and Condoleezza Rice [from when she comes to Harding in April] to put on my desk … if [President David B.]Burks will let me meet her.”
