Recent Georgia Perimeter College graduate Farhin Lilywala has nabbed a dream summer internship for budding journalists: working for The New York Times.

Lilywala is the former editor-in-chief of The Collegian, Georgia Perimeter’s student-run newspaper. She will intern June 5-July 31 in The New York Times’ Washington bureau with investigative journalist Ian Urbina.

Lilywala will help Urbina with research, social media and with article revisions as needed. Urbina writes investigative environmental pieces and features for The New York Times. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his reporting on former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s involvement in a prostitution ring.

Lilywala found out about the internship as a GPC freshman while attending a college newspaper convention in New York.

“The first time, I asked about it, they said I was too young,” she says. “I think they were looking for a sophomore or rising junior.” She was persistent and applied again this past fall. Now 19, she was notified that she received the internship this past spring semester.

The program, DC Internships, is run by the Fund for American Studies based at George Mason University in Virginia. Lilywala will take two classes at George Mason during the summer semester in addition to her internship duties. The internship is not paid; however, her grades will transfer.

She is excited about the opportunity. “I know I like newswriting and investigative reporting, but this will give me a chance to see if I really like it,” she says.

Lilywala says she has always loved writing, but she almost didn’t come to Georgia Perimeter. In 2013, she was accepted into Georgia Tech’s Literature, Media and Communications program after graduating from Whitewater High School in Fayetteville. But when her family left for Kansas to explore a business possibility, she had to change her college plans.

“Over that summer, I started a job in Kansas helping my cousins out and started my first college semester at community college there, where I worked as a news editor of the college newspaper,” Lilywala says.

After less than a year in Kansas, her family decided that they didn’t want to make a permanent move. Lilywala returned to Georgia and started at Georgia Perimeter in the spring of 2014.

 “Originally I was only going to stay for a semester at GPC, but I decided to stay and do my associate degree here and transfer after that,” she says.

An Honors student and member of Phi Theta Kappa honor society, Lilywala made good use of her time at GPC. In addition to her editing duties at The Collegian, she worked as an intern for the college’s literary magazine, The Chattahoochee Review.

Lilywala plans to go to New York University this fall.