Rock the Vote!

well... tomorrow's V-day as it may be (and i DON'T mean national singles awareness day) and i'm surprised how excited i am. partly because i'm sick of hearing people rant and rave about their favorite candidate, sick of the division an election creates among a country, sick of people telling me who i SHOULDN'T vote for and why, and no one being able to give me the real story, unbiased, side-by-side, issue-by-issue. i've learned that it's impossible to agree 100% with a candidate, but it's important to become as informed as you can. to consider every side of every story. to make decisions to the best of your ability based on who you agree with most...

since i have close friends and family who have been very vocal about both sides of the election, i feel the need to take my mom's example and not share publicly who i'm voting for. but i am eager to get up tomorrow and vote for the first time ever. (last election, while i was old enough, i didn't register right away, didn't get an absentee ballot, didn't vote.) at the time i felt like i had no right to vote because i didn't understand politics, didn't really care, didn't know anything about any of the candidates. but my perspective has switched a little since. maybe it's because i've studied abroad. maybe it's because of the events of the past few years (sept 11th, the war in iraq, etc). maybe it's the strong opinions of so many close friends forcing me to be at least a little politically aware. maybe i'm just growing up (God i hope not...)

whatever the reason, first thing tomorrow i'm going to walk across the lawn (how convienient is THAT?) and vote. are you?