It occurs to me, although I have cognitively known this the whole time, that many of the major milestones of my adult life since the dread Y2K have been eclipsed by a presidency and administration that ruled with fear and compromised the ideals upon which this country was founded over and over again. I mean really, the only “major” milestone in this decade that happened before the W Administration was me turning 18 and being able to vote in my first election ever.

I turned 18 in September 2000, and I made the cutoff with less than a month before voter registration closed. I was excited too. Maybe one of the only people my age at the time who was really into the whole election process, I wanted to take full advantage of my fortuitous birthday, and I’m pretty sure I registered to vote the day after my birthday. My candidate didn’t win (remember how that happened?), but I had no idea how things were going to play out.

Milestones that happened during the W Administration:

• Graduating from high school
• Starting college at KU (the best years of my life, but always shadowed by the administration’s epic fails).
• Living away from home for the first time; having roommates in a real deal townhouse apartment.
• Studying abroad for the first time (which happened to coincide with the first U.S. bombs dropping in Iraq, March 2003-we got the news while sitting in a classroom in Paris, at the height of the “freedom fry” popularity-we’re still there).
• Turning 21, which, admittedly, was a good time (but may have been better under a different president. Yeah, I’ll go there; I’ll also add turning 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, and 26 under this banner. That’s a lotta years).
• The season finale of Dawson’s Creek (hey, it was kind of a big deal).
• The series premiere of LOST, September 2004 (eerily enough, in the LOST-verse, W is still president. This is slightly mindboggling to me. No Obama? How will they ever get off the island?)

• Watching another election bust (I had participated in as many local elections as I could at this point, and continued to do so afterward, but I was pretty disappointed about the W victory in November 2004. Bleh).
• Completing an honor’s thesis in History about Woman’s Suffrage (hmmm).
• Graduating from college, May 2005 
• The first of two eye surgeries (I could see clearer, but the picture wasn’t prettier).
• Starting Law School at KU, August 2005 (during law school, I was constantly faced with decisions of the administration and the courts and everything that came out of a fear-based system of government; I saw civil rights compromised in the name of defense against weapons that didn’t exist; I saw gas prices rise higher than I ever had before; I saw fear and anger pervade interpretations of the Constitution, the document on which most of my legal education was based, and many, many more).
• Studying abroad again, in Istanbul (we got lots of questions from the Turkish people about Bush and his policies…we had to explain that it was the government, and that more than half the people didn’t agree with those policies).
• Increasing diversity awareness in the KU Law community (my personal best I think. My way of fighting against the fear and intolerance encouraged by the administration).
• Winning the Orange Bowl and NCAA National Championship
• Graduating from law school, May 2008 (the end was near, caucusing and campaigning were at an all time high for the time of year).
• Studying for/taking the Kansas Bar Exam (let’s not talk about those months, but I blame the administration for making them worse than they had to be. Ok, that might be a bit of a stretch, but I’m on a roll).
• Spending a fabulous weekend in Chicago (Obama’s adopted home, and a great city, a great concert, great friends, and pervasive HOPE).
• Moving home. To Wichita (conservative haven, not a good place for me, but I’ve done ok so far).
• The second of two eye surgeries (I think I could see a prettier picture this time).

  

• Passing the bar exam in September 2008 (I’ll attribute this to the fact that Obama was doing really well in the polls and was advocating change and hope and overall awesomeness-and maybe I studied my arse off). :-)
• Getting sick, but refusing to let that stop me from voting in the November 2008 ELECTION! (I had an MRI in the morning, and then went to the polling site to vote. Shortly after that, I started getting better. I consider it a metaphor, I was sick, miserable, things sucked, then I voted-and started medicine a couple of days later-and things got better).

Pretty much everything that happened after that was still under the rule of W, but it was like he wasn’t really president anymore (come on, you know it’s true), and so things have generally been awesome since the beginning of November.

Here’s to HOPING that the next eight years of milestones are shaded with something a little less sinister, a little less devisive, and a little more awesome.

Ok, so this post is slightly esoteric, but really, I think it works :-)

Peace out, Bush.