It’s automatic… To write off a two year college as an ‘extension of high school’. I have to admit that I did it. When my mother told me that I was going to have to attend Southwestern Illinois College for the first two years of my college career, I audibly groaned and then proceeded to throw a fit… I was eighteen… What can I say? Everyone I’d talked to seemed to dread it, and the acronym, SWIC, had its own cute little nickname… ‘Still Writing In Crayon’… Before that the college was called BAC, to which the kids christened it ‘Bring a Crayon’. So, with a name like that, how could it offer me anything of value? Without a second thought I automatically figured that my first two years of college were going to blow…

Let me tell you exactly how wrong I was.

Every week there is a new event on the SWIC campus to keep the students entertained… Be it a Talent Show, a karaoke contest, a game day, or something to help relieve stress during finals (like last year they had a live Angry Birds game!). The classes are just as academically challenging here as they would be at any four year, if not harder. The professors here intend to make sure that you are prepared for that inevitable moment when you transfer… I feel more prepared now than I ever would have at the end of high school.

During my time here I had the incredible opportunity to join the College Activities Board, which is a group of students that are hired at the beginning of each year who are then put in charge of nearly every activity that goes on around campus… So the events are by the students for the students. And this, is what I believe, has truly given me an edge going forward in life.

My ultimate goal, once I’m finished with college, is to become a teacher… And by working on the College Activities Board I have been given the opportunity to work hands on with other students and to help better my community around me. This, in my opinion, is worth more than any amount of money I might have saved by going here. It has helped me to see that the career path I’ve chosen is the right one for me, and it has also helped me to know that, going on in life, I will be able to handle whatever comes my way.

SWIC has given me the confidence to go forward in my education knowing that I now have a firm background to rely on. The classes have helped to prepare me, the activities have helped to keep me well rounded, and my time on the College Activities Board has helped me to experience new things that can only better me as a person. Overall, as far as two year institutions go, I’d say you’d be hard pressed to find a better place than Southwestern Illinois College.

scholarship is sponsored by CenturyLinkQuote.com

Every four years, the strangest people seem to crawl out of the word work. The radicals, the liberals, the right wing conservatives, the socialists, the tea partiers, the communists, and even a few Nazis… Yes, I said Nazis… They still exist, though most of the time they seem to go by neo-Nazi now. Why, you may ask? Well, it’s simple really. Every four years the United States of America holds its presidential election, an election during which we pick a man (or, perhaps one day, a woman) to guide our country towards its best interests. If we like him, and let’s face it- even if we didn’t, unfortunately we wouldn’t do much, he remains in office for four years until the next election comes up… At which point that person will either run for a second term or gracefully step down to let a new person have a whack at the position.

These elections that come round every four years bring not only the different parties, but the strange people that are associated with them. Be they Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Hilary Clinton (though she’s not currently running), Randall Terry, Darcy Richardson, Barrack Obama, or even Robert Burck, and yes… he is the naked cowboy street performer that is infamous in New York City. Each person has his or her own idea on how the country should be run, and each person uses that as his or her platform when election time comes around.

But the ultimate questions always remain…

Who is the best candidate?

Who can handle our country for four years?

Who can pull our economy out of where it’s at, lower gas prices, increase education rates, create an acceptable health care reform bill, stop terrorism, make the world like us, decrease the deficit, and overall change the United States back to the way it was when Clinton left office?

And the answer is:

Nobody.

That is a huge expectation to throw on someone’s shoulders, and there isn’t one person who could possibly accomplish all of that in four years, or even eight if they are elected to that coveted second term. The best we can hope for is that we elect someone who can lay the ground work. Someone who can start the reform process and get it going so that the presidents we elect after that can hopefully continue to work at it… and maybe, over the next fifty or so years, we can somehow manage to at least begin to pull ourselves back from the precipice at which we currently stand.

Is there someone who can accomplish this?

The answer is:

Yes.

My opinion may differ greatly from most people, and it may actually shock those who know me well… But my personal choice for this hard task would be Barrack Obama. Now, I will be the first to admit that overall I am not his biggest fan. Personally, I believe that his health care bill is ridiculous and needs to be stricken down. I believe some of the things he promised in his 2008 campaign were absolutely unattainable, and I also believe that he didn’t exactly deliver on his promise of change.

But does that make him a bad person? No. Not in my book.

He simply bit off more than he could chew, and I think anyone going into the Presidency will do that. You simply don’t understand what you are getting into until you are there. And President Obama was no exception. He had grandiose plans for the direction he wanted to push the country towards… He had amazing ideas, and if they’d been at all possible, they could have made our country ten times better. But unfortunately they weren’t.

Time and experience, however, make you wiser. And I believe that going into this second term, he will have far better knowledge of what to expect than he did the first go around. If his slow, progressive change of the country hasn’t shown that, I believe his vast amount of new grey hairs should.

In general, I personally don’t align myself with any party. I can see the benefits to both, and as such I put my vote in who I believe will be best, be they Republican, Democrat, Independent, Tea Party (though let’s face it, that will NEVER happen), Green party, or some new group that just rolled off the press. I will put my faith in who I believe can direct our country in a beneficial direction, and right now I believe that is Barrack Obama.

While I may not necessarily agree with his Health Care reform, I do agree with his economic platform… Putting Americans back to work to help boost our economy, putting money back where it needs to go, and replacing the ever growing middle-class’s security through bills and reform. As a college student, of course I agree with his reforms on education… While perhaps it isn’t the best idea for decreasing our deficit, he has allotted more money to go towards scholarships and grants than ever before, allowing students, who might not otherwise be able, to attend to college and get a higher education. He’s also putting more funding into the public school systems so that our children are getting better educations, making us better equipped to compete with the growing education rates of the world. I firmly support Obama’s equal rights platform… But perhaps that’s because in that aspect I tend to be more liberal in my leanings. He repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell which allowed many more people to be who they are and comfortable in their own skin in the Armed Services. The country even held a contest for the first homosexual homecoming kiss to be recorded and documented… (In case you’re interested, a Navy female couple won… A truly touching moment.) He’s also signed into a law a bill that will help women in their long standing battle to get equal pay for equal work.

Along with these issues there are many others, ranging from National Security, to taxes, to the environment, and even to women’s health. For the particulars on these platforms, please feel free to visit http://www.barackobama.com/ and educate yourself… I encourage everyone to take the time to research the candidates who are running and to make the best informed decision possible. The presidency isn’t and shouldn’t be a popularity contest. It shouldn’t be about who is the prettiest or who has the best public speaking abilities (though, admittedly, those are important)… It should be about who we believe can run this country right and can help to push us in the direction we need to go so that we can begin to correct the many problems that we now face.

So please, if you haven’t already, take the time to look into the candidates and be ready to make an informed decision this November… Because this may be the year in which we decide whether our country will soar to new heights… or fall lower than we’ve ever been.

by YourLocalSecurity.com