When I first conceived this story, I wanted to express what it meant to be a millennial while answering the question of what millennials — namely, those who are going to be first-time voters during the 2016 presidential election — expected of the next president.I chose to write about this because I genuinely believe that youth is important, and thusly important to the political process. Millennial voters have actually outnumbered Baby Boomers if everyone chose to vote. I think millennials have a lot of great ideas, but they are jaded about politics and don’t understand how much of a voice they really have. I wanted to see what my peers had to say about the political process, how they planned to vote, or what their hopes for the future of the United States was. Whatever they wanted to talk about, I listened to. It didn’t all make the final cut, but it was all well appreciated.

My paper was pretty unique in that it was something of an opinion piece, but written about the opinions of my peers rather than my own opinions. There was very little hard fact in the piece, and thus the reporting and research process, as well as the process of finding sources, was very simple: I basically just went and talked to my friends. Of course, casting that wide of a net led to it’s own challenges in that I was left to weed through the responses and see which ones could be incorporated into a story in some way. I had to determine the common themes — in this case, a good sense of humor, as somewhat prematurely jaded attitude toward politics, and yet, somehow, a penchant for idealistic hope for the future.

 

I originally thought that this story would take a sort of slideshow form, with a picture of each person I spoke to, and some quotes from the interview and analysis. However, not all of the responses I received were very well-said, or particularly in-depth. The responses I received in the interviews also became rather repetitive and seemed to fit one or more of the criteria I outlined — humor, negativity, and still, hope. So instead I wrote a sort of mass narrative, which included several voices, of the most memorable and most noteworthy quotes that I gathered during the interview process.

I’ve learned a lot about the political process this year in class that I never would have known before. Above anything else though, I learned that government is not always about the people — previously, my idealistic millennial mind refused to believe that government may serve corporations and other such entities before the common voter. Alternatively, I’ve learned that the people, especially members of the media and the press, do definitely have a voice in regards to what is going to happen to our country. It’s just up to us to use it.

I hope that readers will learn from this story that millennials do care about who the president is, and about what happens to our country. I hope they are able to see that when young people refuse to partake in the political process, it is out of frustration rather than apathy. I hope that anyone who is perhaps not a millennial who reads my story will come to a better understanding of the thought processes of our country’s youngest voters.