Photo Courtesy of Daniel Cody

“I like to consider myself a passionate person, with my major and politics especially. I was young – 14 – when the 2016 election primaries were going on, and it was super hectic. It was interesting; I wanted to know what everyone was talking about in politics. From that point on, I read the news a lot, trying to keep up with the who-said-what on domestic and international issues. Donald Trump’s takeover blew my mind, and I knew I wanted to be in the field where this crazy stuff happened. I hopped on the 2016 political hype. I listen to music to lose all of it though, especially ’90s grunge rock. My dad got me into it, every time I got into his car, I’d hear Nirvana, which later in middle school sent me into a different realm. I had no idea that music could give so much emotion. I got super obsessed with Kurt Cobain, which gatewayed into other artists from that time period like Chris Cornell – I got really into it. The heaviness and heat of the lyrics are really dark. It’s a depressing music genre and it has a lot to do with darkness, but I think I like it because there’s so much emotion in it. You feel someone’s emotions and internal conflict, love and passion, you feel it all in the music. They put a part of themselves into the song. Most of my political ideals were made at this same time, kind of early high school. I went into freshman year of high school not knowing the difference between a Democrat and a Republican, and walked out religiously checking the news and anything I could know about any politician. My political ideal is completely on a single-issue basis. It’s never a monolith. I’d just listen to something and think, ‘Yes, that’s correct,’ or ‘No, we shouldn’t do that.’ It happens to be that a lot of them just fall into a liberal category – I don’t let other people’s views influence me. I look at issues from my own self-education of politics. People try to tell me to think a certain way and that I should follow a certain belief or ideology, and I’d just let myself figure it out on my own. I don’t want to base my belief on what someone tells me; I want to forge it myself, what I can gather from my experience and situation. If I could send literally everyone a text message right now at Hofstra, it’d say ‘VOTE.’ I have a free mindset. We’re only on Earth for the time being, make the most out of it, be yourself and live your own life. There is no version of you, and no one has gone through the things uniquely that you have, so you have your own special experience. Don’t change who you are to satisfy someone else.”