Full Circle

By: Andrea Sheetz

As a very eager prospective student, I spent much of my senior year of high school browsing the website of Elon University. Probably more often than they would have liked, I reported to my family and friends what super cool thing Elon was doing, and thus what opportunity I would soon have. One of these was the 2016 Winter Term class. I had not yet decided on a school when I first saw an article about students traveling to Des Moines ahead of the Iowa Caucuses. But I did know that any university that recognized what an unparalleled political education a trip such as that one could bring was worth serious consideration.

Here I am, four years after that original course, in a hotel room in Des Moines. In complete honesty, I have not been as excited as I thought I would be. Perhaps it has been such a long time coming that I have become numb. Also, the nature of the events we will be attending makes it impossible to have a set itinerary even a few days in advance, so I do not know what exactly I could be excited about. It does not help either, that the candidate I most admired and planned to work with for months ended his campaign less than a week before our plane took off. While my class discussions have been fantastic and the idea of all I have been told we will experience thrills me, I have been worried that these 12 days will not live up to what I have created them to be. 

However, a big lesson I’ve learned in college so far is that you get out of experiences what you put into them. One piece of advice we were given was to talk to people on the ground. We are here to learn about the Caucus and all that surrounds it, and every person we encounter has a different perspective. Maybe it was that idea, or my many cups of coffee and far too many hours traveling, but I began to surprise myself from our first night in Des Moines. Now, striking up a conversation with a total stranger, especially about their politics, completely mortifies me. But in the hotel elevator that first night, a gentleman made a comment about the weather and instead of politely agreeing and ending it there, as I very much enjoy doing, I asked what he was doing in town, and shared why I was here. He actually knew some people I know at Elon and we made a connection. Later that evening at dinner, I found myself walking up to a table full of fellow students who all knew each other, and I had first talked to that morning, half of whom I did not know the names of, and asking to join them. We ended up having a wonderful conversation, some surface-level getting to know you, but more about hard topics and where we agree and disagree on them. We did not convince each other. But we all gave one another the utmost respect, had some laughs in between, and I feel as though I left with a much better idea of the issue, and my new friends. Our school only has 6,000 students, but it took traveling 1,000 miles to bring us together.

I hope to maintain this continual putting myself out there, trying new things, and being completely open to new ideas. Maybe I’ll fly home supporting the exact same people and stances as I do today. Maybe they’ll be radically different. But in just a few hours, I found that the only thing that will keep these 12 days from being all they could be is an unwillingness to learn about and appreciate each of the individual people and small aspects that make the Caucus what it is.