My year started out like I imagine most freshman years do. It was awkward, scary, and yet, also very exciting. Interestingly enough it seemed the people I met the first few days ended up all becoming my really good friends. As the year progressed I met tons of other students but that first week was where I met the people I ended up spending most of my time with.
I realized quickly that I wasn’t in New Paltz anymore. I guess I always knew that my small community really was like living in a bubble, but I had never stepped out long enough to get to fully see it. For as much as I love Marist College being there made me realize what an amazing community I live in. I quickly came to understand that I had been given so many blessing in my high school and by all the amazing people in my community.
In some ways my freshman year wasn’t that different than the average college freshman and in others it was completely different! I wasn’t just transitioning to college; I was also transitioning as an elected official as well. This wasn’t the easiest thing for me to do at times. I would be lying if I told you that I swore in and then hit the ground running. At times it too was awkward, scary, and yet so exciting! Like college though I quickly got the hang of it.
In fact during my first week at college I ended up in my high school again! I hadn’t been there since graduation and it was almost scary how comfortable I felt walking in the halls. It felt like nothing had changed but everything had. My first few meetings I felt a bit lost, and I had a moment or two when I had to ask myself if I really could do this. It is scary to think how similar my feelings were there as they were back at school.
At times being a school board member and being a freshman made me feel like I was Superman. There was something exciting about coming back to campus after a meeting, changing into jeans and a t-shirt, and going to watch TV or doing something else with friends as if nothing different had happened that day.
Looking back on it now I am not sure if I have ever learned more during a school year in my entire life. Of course I learned a lot during my thirty-two credits and of course I learned a lot from being on the Board of Education. However, I learned more in between the lines of the classes or the meetings than anything else. I learned about my community and government and from my friends who all came from different parts of our country -and some the world. I learned about life and new perspectives on just about everything imaginable.
As my year went on I got the chance to work on some very interesting projects as well. I had the chance to do some work for Friends of Maurice Hinchey. It was always small projects but even through that I learned so much. I got the chance to go through old photos where I found a letter from a constituent thanking Maurice for voting against the Iraq War. I became his unofficial photographer as well. I attended the Save Minnewaska Rally just a few days before the Health Care vote. I even went to the “Coffee Party” event a few days after the vote.
It was amazing seeing so many people politically charged. I got to see firsthand how decisions really do effect people and what that all means. In a way I didn’t need to follow Maurice Hinchey to learn those things though. I got to see it in New Paltz as well!
It was my last day of school before winter break when we voted to put the Middle School project up for a bond vote. I acknowledge the fact that I am still very young, but I have never seen the community react to an issue like that before.
I had someone at Marist come up to me and even say, “I don’t know what you did but I was in New Paltz the other day and it appears you have started some form of civil war.” To say I was perfectly happy with how that event went would be a complete lie. I regret that we didn’t better communicate the project to our community; I regret that we didn’t have more time for people to fully understand it, and I regret that we weren’t able to debunk many of the myths that went around about the project.
Standing on line to vote was a very interesting experience. I had a man turn to me and say, “They should tear the whole thing down” I asked him why, and he went on to tell me all about the asbestos in the building. I told him that there was no such thing in the building for years. He went on to tell me how if we vote no our taxes will go up only 10% but if we all vote yes they will go up 30%. I told him that I had attended every school board meeting for the last two years and I had never heard such math. He told me that he felt bad that I didn’t realize this and that he had been told it by the “insiders” that he knows. I then decided to introduce myself to him and I mentioned that I was a board member and he simply laughed at me. That seemed to be a metaphor for the rest of the day.
I was disappointed in the results. I truly believed that the project we put up for a vote was the best for the long term, fiscally, educationally, and especially environmentally. People didn’t agree and I have accepted that. I don’t regret how I acted during that time and I don’t regret doing what I believed in. I was very happy to see my community come and vote in numbers that we had never seen before and at the very least I suppose we made people do their civic duty and vote.
The budget process was drastically different and I am so happy that we were able to maintain as many jobs as we could and balance the amazing education that we give during a financial downturn. I learned quickly how different it is to be on the other side of the table and how much my actions do affect people and I don’t take that lightly. I don’t get to really have a say when it comes to bailouts and other issues that appear on the news. At that time though I was able to help stop the cycle a bit, I was able to not punish my friends, neighbors, and my community because of the mistakes others have made at the state and federal level. It would have been easy to sit there and cut things left and right but it simply wouldn’t have been the right thing.
I am so happy that I decided to run for the Board of Education, but I admit there was so much to it that I was unaware of when I decided to do what some felt was crazy and run. The things I got to do on Wednesday nights truly got to shape my year. It gave me the opportunity to get involved in other political things, it gave me the chance to meet dozens of new and interesting people, it filled me with confidence, it showed me a glimpse of my potential, and it made for some damn good stories in some of my political science classes.
I got to even see the President speak at West Point’s graduation. It was a dream to get to see the President but there is something even more special about it when he is addressing a stadium filled with soldiers. For him to talk about what it means to be an American or Iraq and Afghanistan to people who had a completely different outlook on those things then most ever could is mind blowing.
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My favorite moment of the graduation came actually after the President had departed. I had talked a little bit to the family in front of me whose son was graduating that day. His father was dressed in military apparel and was an active member of the military himself. While children scrambled to grab the hats that had just been tossed on the field, I watched as the cadets started coming into the bleachers to find their family. I don’t think I will ever forget the man’s face in front of me as his son climbed up the stairs with his diploma in hand. His son looked at him and said, “You didn’t think I would make it did you Dad?” and the father said, “No…I always knew you would make it.”
I had probably the most action packed year that any college freshman could ever have. I had lunch with Helen Thomas, met dozens of politicians, saw Third Eye Blind, nearly froze to death at Minnewaska, was a part of one of the biggest controversies in the history of New Paltz, passed a budget, saw the President of the United States, made many new friends, and ended my teenage years.
I could probably write a book about all that went on and maybe someday I will. The good things I saw and the bad and doing it all at my age. I really felt like William Miller the boy from Almost Famous and in a way I still do. I remember one of my teachers John Orcutt told me about this time last year that I would learn so much this year, but I had no clue how right he actually was.
The day of the Middle School vote I received a less then nice email from a member of my community. She told me that she had more years in education then I have been alive, that someday I will understand how much I hurt the community, and how she hopes that someday I will be able to see the world differently. I too hope that someday I see the world differently, if I stayed the way I am right now for the rest of my life I would feel like I wasted a life. The thing is until then I really do like seeing the world in the unique way that I do.
This year I did so much. I saw things that inspired me, and things that upset me. I learned a lot of great things and some things I didn’t want to know. I grew more this year than I ever have before. But as my teen years ended conveniently at the same time that freshman year did, I learned one very important thing. Doing the right thing isn’t always the easiest thing…its very cliché and I feel almost embarrassed admitting that it took me just over twenty years to realize that. For the first time though I understand what that fully meant and I will always choose the right thing every day.
