What's with all these politics?

Over the past year, I have changed so much. When I look back to myself one year ago, I see a confused sophomore trying to fit in. I cared so much about my grades and being perfect; I didn't get any grades lower than an A my sophomore year, not even an A-. I began studying for AP tests in February (not exaggerating), when I haven't even started yet this year. But while a year ago I may have had perfect grades and attendance, I was on the golf team and I was okay with spending a Friday night alone (Okay, so I was sort of a nerd), I'm so much more sure of myself now. I've begun to scope out colleges to find the one that's right for me, and I'm starting to look toward the future instead of being stuck in the present. One thing that stands out from the others in an extreme way is the way I've changed, politically.

I've always known that I wanted to be a lawyer. To be honest, I love winning a good argument and well, social studies has always been my favorite class. But I've never really been interested in politics (I know, it seems weird since law and politics go together, but whatever). More recently, I have become much more interested in party politics as well as their history. I've done some research on both major political parties, and because I will be 18 in less than a year, I've begun to form my own opinions of both parties. According to the Gallup, most teens blindly follow their parents' political ideologies. This makes a lot of sense: if a child has more conservative parents, the child is likely to be a conservative adult, and the same goes for those with more liberal parents. But instead of following today's teen majorities, I decided to do my own research and form my own opinions on politics, instead of just agreeing with my parents.

What I found to be most influential in my decisions was not research, however. Everyone (well I assume everyone) knows that Republicans are generally much more conservative when it comes to domestic and foreign policy, yet they generally favor a larger military budget. Democrats, then, tend to favor a larger portion of the budget to go to domestic spending (I'm speaking in general terms, of course, everyone has their own reasons for being affiliated with one party or the other). So as I researched the current agendas as well as the history of both parties, I found lots of pros and cons of both parties. I chose non-biased sources, so none of them pushed me toward one side or the other. I decided in order to form my opinions I would need to observe and speak with members of both parties. I asked some of my more-educated peers questions about their political preferences and why or why not they did or did not choose one party over the other. Of course I received much of the same response: "I don't know, it's just what my parents are." Groan. Why can't people of my generation be independent of their parents? Sigh. What really influenced my decision, however, was not the opinions of my classmates.

I began to look around me. At the families of my friends, at the generalizations in America, at my own family, at the exceptions in America. My observations served as helpful examples of who I did or didn't want to be. Factual information simply informed me, it didn't allow me to form my own opinion. As with anything, I succeeded when I applied the information to my own life and my own world. And I have finally formed my own political opinions.