From left, Heather Globerman, Blake Byington and Leo Barrera recently attended the Georgia Youth Assembly.

While most were visiting family or resting at home over the Thanksgiving break, three Colquitt County High school students were hard at work in the state’s capitol.

On Nov. 24, senior Blake Byington, senior Leo Barrera and junior Heather Globerman traveled to Atlanta with their Y Club advisors Nicole Jackson and Cathy Wentworth to participate in the 69th annual Georgia Youth Assembly.

The Georgia Youth Assembly is a Y Club event where Y Club students from across the state convene in the State Capitol Building for three days, during which they serve as politicians in the Georgia state government. The students are assigned different roles such as senator, representative, youth governor, lieutenant governor, speaker of the House, lobbyist, Supreme Court justice, judiciary, and even media, and the students even occupy their respective place in the Capitol building.

This year, the delegation sent by the Colquitt County High school Y Club was unique in that all of Colquitt County’s students were students who had not only been to the Youth Assembly before, but had either been elected or appointed to official positions for the 2013 Georgia Youth Assembly for exemplary performance in their assigned stations the previous year.

This year, Byington served as a committee chair in the House of Representatives, Barrera served as the assistant door keeper for the House of Representatives, and Globerman served as the editor to the Youth Assembly’s media corps.

From Sunday through Tuesday, all three students were hard at work in their respective positions and were recognized for their efforts Nov. 26, shortly before the 69th annual Youth Assembly announced the officials for next year’s Assembly and came to a close for the year.

The students say that their only regret is that none of them will be able to return in 2014 for the 70th annual Youth Assembly. All three students say that they enjoyed their time at the Youth Assembly, and even though it demanded a lot of hard work from them, all three agreed that it was something they would all do again in an instant if they could.