A Panorama senior was picked as one of four outstanding Iowa high school students to compete to attend the United States Senate Youth Program in Washington, D.C.

It was a profound experience for Payton Douglass, being ranked among students from Des Moines and Waukee. After interviewing with a committee from the Iowa Department of Education and taking a civics exam, Douglass was named an alternate for the program which takes place in March. She shares how it feels coming away from the experience, “I definitely gained a lot of confidence, and I learned I can do a lot more than I thought I could at a small school and that I can compete with the big dogs.”

Besides ranking in the top one percent academically for Iowa’s high school juniors and seniors, Douglass has effectively shown leadership abilities: serving as class and student council president, a member of the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union Student Athlete Advisory Committee, and captain of several athletic teams. Douglass shares why she feels it’s important to get involved in U.S. politics, “Well, I think a major issue right now is a lot of kids my age are using twitter as a media outlet. They need to find the facts and really get involved and figure it out for themselves what they believe and what they don’t believe. But when you only look at Twitter or Instagram and social media, they don’t actually see the facts behind the problems, they just see the opinions.”

Douglass plans on studying biochemistry and macro-economics after high school, and attending medical school to become a dermatologist. She sees the possibility of using her medical profession to influence a run at politics, much like former U.S. Representative for Iowa Greg Ganske.