I Interviewed Jimmy Carter When I Was 26 Years Old. It Was Not My Finest Moment—And It Changed My Life.

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When I first met former President Jimmy Carter, I had a lot to learn.

It was the late ’90s and I was a rookie journalist covering a trip Carter took to Colorado to help 100 at-risk youth experience the transformative power of the outdoors.

For a new reporter, an interview with a former president of the United States is the opportunity of a lifetime. And yet I went into it embarrassingly unprepared and with the attitude that the Nobel Prize winner was lucky to be getting some face time with 26-year-old me.

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