I grew up thinking it was wrong to be a Democrat

For the last year I avoided politics like the plague. I didn’t care about Trump, Hillary, or any other political candidate out there. I refused to caucus or watch the news and practically plugged my ears any time the word ‘election’ was mentioned.

Growing up in Chariton, Iowa, a small, all white, conservative, community, makes it difficult to develop a political mindset of your own, and I was no exception to this. So naturally I dodged the subject in order to prevent facing my civic insecurities.

Entering my freshman year of college I had no idea where I stood. Raised Catholic and surrounded by strong Republican family and friends, I felt obligated to chase the same mindset and beliefs. It wasn’t a matter of whether or not I actually felt the same as they did, but more along the lines of not caring.

It was easier to follow in the footsteps of those around me than to branch out and figure things out for myself.

University life

For someone only (somewhat) familiar with the Republican side of things, attending a university that leans mainly to the Far-Left was a huge culture shock. I had never met so many women that felt so strongly about reproductive rights and the gender wage gap, let alone students who attended school with the sole purpose of protecting our environment. The college campus atmosphere was nothing compared to the sheltered world I grew up in, and I’m thankful everyday that I wandered off in my own direction.

It was during this first year of my college education that I really began to see myself for who I was. Without my family and hometown friends there pushing me to attend church or surrounding me with their own beliefs, I was given the chance to think about the things that I valued rather than what everyone was telling me I should.

In the beginning I had a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that I wasn’t confident as a Republican. At times I felt so guilty I would break down and attend a church service in hopes of reaffirming the church’s teachings or sparking some kind of interest in things I thought related back to the party I ‘supported.’

Eventually I quit going altogether and accepted the fact that I shouldn’t feel entitled to agree with everything I was raised to believe.

It’s okay to be wrong

Determining exactly where you stand on the political spectrum as an adult takes a lot of backbone, especially when discovering that you’ve been in the wrong place all along. One second you think you feel one way, and the next you’re seeing things in an entire different light and thinking Hillary Clinton just might have a brain in that head of hers.

I had always been lead to think that if I was a Democrat I would be seen differently in the eyes everyone around me. Little exposure to liberals throughout my lifetime made me so small minded that I hardly had the decency to listen or understand what the party stood for.

Without doing any research, I referred to liberals as ‘the party that only wanted more’ and ‘cared too much about women,’ when in reality I had no idea what they wanted, let alone what my own party desired. I was compelled to believe that I didn’t need to check my facts and either way it didn’t matter because I was and always would be a conservative.

Figuring it out

Acting on my political party doubts, I decided to take a quiz to determine where I stand on all this jargon and if I really had been kidding myself for the last 20 years. (Surprise: I had been.)

The last time I took a quiz like this I was a senior in high school, surrounded by my friends, and blowing through the questions one-by-one. I didn’t want to stick out, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. Turns out the majority of my friends and classmates leaned to the Far-Right. Shocker.

After a grueling couple of hours working through a quiz very similar to the one I took in high school, isidewith.com revealed that I am in fact apart of the moderate Left-Wing on an ideological scale. This means that I tend to support policies that promote social and economic equality. Throughout this process, research was key in my understanding of healthcare policies, hydraulic fracking, the economy, and a million other issues.

It was important for me to comprehend exactly what was being asked in order for an accurate answer and to settle the doubts I had been having. My knowledge of politics in general was far from concrete, let alone my views regarding a particular party, so I googled every second word in order to fully understand was I was being asked. Granted the amount of effort I put into the quiz was important, but that wasn’t the only factor playing into my final answer.

What it’s all about

It’s all about growing up. It’s not wrong to be a Republican. It’s not wrong to be a Democrat. What is wrong is denying yourself the opportunity to figure out what really matters to you in this world. I was immersed into a student body and a group of friends at The University of Iowa that wanted their voices to be heard and I wanted to listen.

Give yourself the opportunity to grow apart from everything you’ve always known. We need more people that can fight for what they believe in without being held back by what surrounds them.