The Atlanta Lawyer August/September 2014 | Page 20

Summer Law Internship Program

SLIP Farewell address
By Tseganesh (Gracie) Gebresilassie
Arabia Mountain High School, Interned with DeKalb County
Solicitor General’s Office

G

ood morning friends, family, mentors, and interns. It
is my incredible honor today to welcome you to the
Appreciation and Farewell Breakfast of the 2014
Atlanta Bar Association Summer Law Internship Program.
Let me begin by introducing myself; my name is Tseganesh
Gebresilassie, also known as Gracie, and I am a rising
senior at Arabia Mountain High School. I am a first-year
intern with this program, and for the past six weeks I have
had the privilege to serve in the Office of DeKalb County
Solicitor General Sherry Boston, under the mentorship of
Mrs. Chastity Rogers. Had it not been for Mrs. Rogers’s
tutelage and support throughout this program, I could not
have gained the invaluable experience I did in the last six
weeks. So to her and all the mentors, supervisors, and
sponsors that have dedicated your precious time to us and
helped and continued to help interns to strive to reach our
potential, on behalf of the 2014 Interns we say thank you. I
would also like to extend a note of appreciation on behalf of
the Interns to the nucleus of this internship; our coordinators
Mariana Pannell, Natasha Silas, Nekia Hackworth and Wade
Malone. Your tireless efforts and unwavering dedication to
the success and growth of each student in this program is
truly something I have never witnessed before. For all that
you do, on behalf of my fellow interns, we are grateful.
The Interns would like to thank the Atlanta Bar Association
and its leaders for conceiving of the Summer Law Internship
Program in 1993 before any of us 2014 Interns were even
born and continuing to have the Internship Program 22 years
later. During this summer I have met many former Interns
and they all remark about how the Internship program helped
prepare them in so many ways.
The best way for me to depict this experience is to think of
it as journey; similar to a road trip even. The program, for us
interns, began the moment we received that single defining
email; you’re in! You made it through the applications, the
essays, the interviews, you are in and you are here. These
are the stages of saying, yes, I am going on this journey, and
yes, I have the means of transporting myself to where I want
to go. But at this point, as you will soon discover, you are not
yet so close to your destination.
Now what? It is time to get oriented. As any intern here will
20 THE ATLANTA LAWYER

August/September 2014

tell you, the most intensive part of this internship program
started long before any of us stepped into work. Now, when
planning for a journey, you need to prepare yourself; equipping
yourself with every possible solution to nearly every possible
obstacle. Every intern in this program attended four mandatory
orientations, in the afternoons and early mornings of our first
weeks out of school. Here we were polished, pressed and
nearly scared to death by our program coordinators; however,
we were scared in the best possible way. These meetings,
accompanied by our weekly meetings following the last
orientation, truly prepared and changed every student you see
sitting here today.
At each meeting a
speaker would be
provided to talk to
all the interns; this
person could be an
associate at a law
firm, an attorney,
and many times, a
student just like us,
albeit a law student.
The knowledge
and wisdom these
individuals shared
with us will provide
inspiration and
guidance for us to
pull from for years to
c