Origin Material

        My origin piece is a letter I wrote to Barack Obama during his 2009 inauguration speech when I was about 9 years old.  My parents made me write this letter expressing my feelings about such a historic moment in U.S. history.  I stayed home from school that day and watched the inauguration with my family.  My parents kept the letter my sister and I wrote stored away in a file cabinet in our house.  The letter is informal, child-like, and funny—but conveys a 

candid sense of happiness and emotion regarding his inauguration.  

 

      I have always been interested in politics, even at a young age when I didn’t really understand the complexity of political issues.  This piece is interesting to me because my excitement as an 8-year-old regarding the election is not the same excitement I have felt in the recent years regarding politics.  Using this letter, I examined what has changed both politically and internally regarding my own mindset.  I also examined what probes peoples’ memories and how political thought processes are developed.