I don’t remember a United States of America before 9/11. In fact, I don’t remember 9/11 very well. All I remember is the stillness and quiet that washed over my school as the teachers periodically huddled in the hallway and conversed in hushed tones. I remember my friend’s brother pulling her out of class. I remember my lunch lady being strangely absent.  I remember the fighter jets flying over my house when no planes were supposed to be in the air. I remember sitting in my living room watching the news with my parents as they showed the planes crashing into the twin towers over and over. I remember seeing my hometown on a list of top 10 most likely targets for the next terrorist attack. I remember being dropped off at a family friend’s house as my family attended the funeral of my lunch lady’s son, who was also my siblings’ classmate’s brother. For a second grader, those months were mostly an impression of grief mixed with confusion. At an age when everyone is trying to protect you from the truth, what you do understand is shaded with uncertainty and what you feel is an impression of everyone else’s emotions.

Our nation was attacked, and we responded. After, politics permeated our lives. As a very young girl, I relied on my parents to understand the world around me. They explained that hijackers had taken over planes and crashed them into the twin towers and the Pentagon. They explained who these people were and why they didn’t like the United States. They explained why we were going to war and what the yellow ribbon tied around the neighbor’s tree meant. My world was filtered through theirs. But as I grew up, I started to expand my simple understanding of politics. As I went to public high school and university, I stepped out of my Catholic school foundation and into a multireligious and multicultural environment that allowed me to question. 

When you step out of a microcosm that feeds you one narrative and into a macrocosm that has competing narratives, you are forced to create your own filter that allows you to understand the complexities of the macrocosm. The fundamental elements of your filter will always be based on your learned experiences starting with the experiences of your childhood and building with each new life experience. The varied life experiences of the people I have met formed their just as varied political opinions, which reflected back to me how my life experiences informed my opinions. When you are faced with drastically different opinions than your own, you have to make a choice; either you say nothing, you argue your side vehemently, or you listen and ask questions. Due to my inquisitive nature, I generally lean towards the latter. But it was never a single intentional decision. It was a million decisions made over a million different moments. It’s the moment you are sitting with your friends in a bar and politics filter into the conversation, but instead of arguing your side, you test your theories through questions. You challenge their political opinions and develop yours further, making you both better informed. 

After years of casually engaging in these conversations, my views gradually shifted without me really recognizing it. It wasn’t until the primary elections for the 2016 presidential elections that I came face to face with what my political views truly were. I was hanging out with my roommates in our living room watching the debates and discussing the different points when my roommate looked at me with confusion. “I don’t understand how you still consider yourself Republican when your views do not align with the views of the Republican candidates.” I honestly don’t remember what I said back to her, but that moment stuck with me. I used to describe myself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Then I had to ask myself what fiscally conservative really meant. Why could we spend so much money on the Iraq War but my public high school and university are consistently having their funding cut?  Did I really understand what Republican meant? I had held onto what my idealistic-self believed the Republican party should be but is that what the party actually is? Is it still the party of Lincoln?

With time, I realized that I was holding onto a label whose meaning was constantly shifting. The 2016 election drove home that the Republican party no longer represented what I believed in. I realized I needed to understand what I believed and vote with who best represented those ideals. For now, that is the Democratic party.  But I have now allowed myself the space to shift the label that represents my views, especially as I continue to educate myself and develop my political opinions.

Then we were attacked, again. There were no planes. There were no bombs. There was no gunfire. This time it was lines of code. It was Tweets and Facebook posts. It was stolen information. It was the spreading of misinformation. It was an attack on our democracy.

And we did not respond. The newly elected leadership of this country stood by and let it happen. They stood next to the leader of the attack while publicly denouncing the attack and the conclusions of our intelligence community about the perpetrators of the attack. The way Russia was able to implement a strategy to influence the election of the President of the United States of America and our current administration’s lack of action is the greatest threat to our country since 9/11.  And the worst part is that the people we have elected to protect us either do not understand the true nature of the attack or are not willing to anything to prevent it from happening again.

In April 2018, I was fortunate enough to organize a visit to Washington D.C. with my fellow Bioengineering students from the University of California, San Diego to volunteer at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. While there, our amazing advisor made it possible for us to attend the AIMBE annual meeting. As the twelve youngest people in the room, we witnessed the potential impact our careers could make not only in the world of Bioengineering and medicine but also in the political landscape.

A goal of the trip was always to advocate for Bioengineering research funding to our Senators and Representatives on the hill after the festival. This was easily the most intimidating part of the trip, but also the most rewarding part for me. I was able to participate in my government in a way I didn’t even know was possible. We set up 9 meetings with the staffers of our Senators and Representatives, unfortunately almost exclusively with Democrats because they were the ones that responded to our emails. Then my group did something I never would have expected. They decided to walk into the offices of their representatives that didn’t respond to their emails and ask to talk to them about research funding. We were able to spontaneously meet with the staff of an additional 4 Senators and Representatives. I didn’t organize those meetings or even suggest them. My group was so inspired by using their voice to advocate that they took the initiative. It touched me in a way that I can’t really explain. I was exhausted from coordinating the weekend, and hours before we were supposed to go home, my team embraced their mission in a way I never expected. I asked them to send me group pictures of team members with every staff member they met. As the pictures came through on my phone and the excited texts accompanied them, I could feel how empowered each team member felt. They were making a difference. They were participating in government in a way they didn’t know was possible. They were finding hope for the future of our government in a time when we felt betrayed and hurt by the people that were supposed to protect us.

I had an hour break after I met with the staff of a representative from California and before my next meeting with Senator Dianne Feinstein’s staff. I decided to take a moment to walk over the capital building with my camera. As I looked up at the magnificence of capital building, I was overwhelmed with awe. Not with awe of the building itself, but with symbolism that was built into the city of Washington, D.C. A few days before, I visited the White House with some members of my team. I was surprised to find it just seemed like a house. A very nice house, but much smaller than I had built it up to be in my mind. And maybe it seemed small because of who currently occupies it. But when I walked up the hill to this grand Capital building, I realized that the city planners had taken the founders vision to heart. The United States government puts the power in the hands of the people, no matter who occupies the house at the bottom of the hill.

We, the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I truly love this country; not because of what it currently is but because of what it has the potential to become. At its core, it has the ability to grow. The founders did not create a perfect nation; they created a nation that has the ability to strive for perfection. As I have traveled to different countries, I am proud to say that I am from the United States of America. While in the last couple of years that introduction is accompanied by an apology for what the leaders of my country have said, I don’t feel shame because I know that the strength of the United States comes from how we fight through times of great adversity and become stronger for it. We were founded on the original sin of slavery; it took until 1865 to adopt the 13th amendment and almost another century to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We are not a perfect nation; we are a nation of people continuously striving to be a more perfect union.