On Friday, Feb. 16 I got the opportunity to have lunch with Penn State President Eric Barron. Well, that’s definitely a phrase that you don’t hear every day – but it did happen to me.
Let me back up for a minute. I got the chance to have lunch with President Barron after interning for Penn State’s Global Entrepreneurship Week in the fall. My amazing boss awarded me with this lunch for all of my hard work throughout the semester.
When I was chosen by my boss to have lunch with President Barron, I was shook to my core. Then, I got an E-mail from President Barron’s personal secretary telling me to meet President Barron at the Nittany Lion Inn – because as you can imagine, Chick-fil-A is not good enough for President Barron.
I dressed business casual for this affair because I assumed that President Barron was going to be in a suit and tie. I arrived at the Nittany Lion Inn five minutes before lunch was about to begin and found that two other students were there with me.
Suddenly, I saw President Barron strolling down the hallway from a distance. It was somewhat surreal because I had never seen him in person.
I nervously got out of my seat to shake his hand and that’s when it hit me that I was about to eat lunch with President Barron.
I made sure to put my phone in my pocket because I’m the worst at checking my phone during meals. Can you imagine if President Barron was asking me a question as I was trying to Snapchat?
He explained to us that we could either order off the menu or go to the buffet.
I was shocked to see that President Barron ordered a salad, and it made me wonder if he ever goes to Fiddlehead for salads that are bigger than his head. Another shocking fact: He didn’t finish the entire salad. I assumed because he moves around so much that he would be starving – but apparently not.
Overall, he’s a pretty normal – but very busy – man. He loves sports, but he only gets to go to one or two events within each sport per season (except for football, of course.)
He lived in Colorado and Florida before coming to Happy Valley, where he did undergraduate and post-graduate work in geology and oceanography.
I would characterize him as a very down-to-earth person, and one of the most memorable things he said to us was, that if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t change anything because he learns best from his mistakes.
After some great salmon and vegan lasagna, an hour had flown by. It was almost time for President Barron to go back to being our faithful leader. After a piece of chocolate cake, he strolled out and I felt like a regular person once more.