Saturday, January 24, 2009

Challenges

Being on a very conservative college campus when you are a known (or at least expected) radical liberal can be interesting. This is all the more true when you have a presidential election. 

For one thing, all during the primaries, I was expected to vote for Barack Obama. While I did like him I was skeptical and instead went with my gut. This surprised a lot of people. 

Fast forward to the election and people knew who I was going to vote for and asked me why I had jumped onto the bandwagon. Little did they know, I wasn't completely sold on Obama still. As one of my professors can attest to, we had a very in depth conversation on whether or not two extremely liberal people could vote for McCain and still consider themselves extremely liberal. Beyond this, how can they justify said action? We eventually came to the conclusion that regardless of who either of us voted for or who one we would be content. But this scared both of us. Why were we content with McCain when we didn't agree with many of his policies nor with his leadership style and definitely not his party's action for the previous (almost) 8 years. 

This is where we came upon another hurdle.... Eventually, though we both decided that the majority of people who agreed with us politically could not be having this problem and thus we would be saved from having to examine this issue further. But like the bulk of the rest of America, we were torn...what were we to do? We had to vote with our hearts but we just didn't know where they were leading us....

Another fast forward. Election night. I found myself among a group of both very liberal and very conservative people sharing a television in the same room as two NPHCs sharing another television. As excited as we all were to see the results, we all knew what it had come to nonetheless. We were going to experience history being made...and that scared us. Were we ready for this? We were/are just kids...what do we know about history making moments? 

And a final fast forward. Inauguration day. I found myself amazed at what was going to happen. At how much history had been made during my lifetime...and I was excited. I was also fearful for the challenges that the new president would face. So now, I look at how President Obama has changed the face of the presidency is such a short time and I am happy to say that I voted for him. It took me some time to "jump on the bandwagon" and I'm still not sure that I'm not it yet. But I cannot wait to support my president, evaluate his accomplishments, and defend his policies to those who do not understand.... 

And that is why I am happy to say that I voted for this great man. It was a challenge for all of us to make history that day. But we must continue to come together to make history even now. 

No comments: