The 17-year-old junior at Mercy High School in Burlingame will head to Washington, D.C., in January to serve as a U.S. congressional page. Malekos-Smith was nominated by Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo/San Francisco, and served as an intern for state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Mateo/San Francisco, for 18 months.

Do you want to work in politics one day? I’m not certain right now. I’m hoping by being in this program I can figure out whether I want a career in this. I was interested in getting into FBI work maybe.

The FBI? Why? One of my passions is acting, and that is one of the crucial skills you need as an agent in the FBI. It’s also a job that teaches you skills like how to use a gun or how to protect yourself, and it’s a job where you can help out your country, and I’m very patriotic.

Who in Washington are you most excited to meet? The president.

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What do you think you’ll say when you see him? I really don’t think he’ll have time to say anything other than “hello” and maybe shake our hands.

Pages earn $1,616 a month — that’s a lot of money for a high school student. What are you going to do with it? It’s all going to college.

Good answer. What do you think will be the best and worst part about being a page? The worst part would probably be if you’re a late-night page — you can work past 1 in the morning, and I’m not a night person. I’m excited to see all the monuments in Washington; I love history. I can say, “That’s the place in 1963 where they had the civil rights march.”

mrosenberg@examiner.com

Check out more 3-minute interviews from our San Francisco newsroom.