I know You are but What am I?

This week I'm switching things up a bit, and letting someone else take the helm. After all, my whole reason for starting this blog was to relate my own experiences as a new college graduate with others experiencing the same thing. For my first guest blog, I asked an old friend of mine who I've known since early high school, but who haled from that other coast on the west. He went to a small liberal arts college, majored in politics, and scared the hell out of me while he studied abroad in Israel. He has since defected to the good coast (though he'd argue otherwise), and has been kind enough to take a moment to step back from his job and his ocd compulsion toward following the news, and give a brief interlude into his own thoughts.

So without further ado, I present Kevin, author of the blog, "The Partisan,"(http://www.partisansblog.blogspot.com/):

Pragmatism vs. Idealism While Coming of Age in an Era of Pragmatism vs. Idealism.

2008 was supposedly the year of hope and change. Politicians clambered onto the bandwagon for fear of falling off the face of the earth if they couldn’t adequately harness discontentment with the outgoing administration and genuine unease regarding the status quo. It was determined that nearly every aspect of industry and infrastructure needed sweeping reform and repair, and that such reform would be undertaken with new resolve and a new sense of unity.

2009, of course, has shown itself to be the year of running up the deficit like it’s going out of style (which clearly it isn’t) and/or shouting surreal incomplete sentences at town hall meeting after town hall meeting after Presidential address before Congress. Reform efforts have stalled or been forgotten. The newly-minted age of “post-partisanship” lasted half a year at best, unceremoniously smothered by ill-conceived Nazi comparisons and members of the House of Representatives formally voting to ‘express disapproval’ with one another.

A sizeable chunk of my undergraduate experience consisted of applying all things sociopolitical and socioeconomic to the beloved ‘pragmatism versus idealism’ dichotomy. Granted, at the time I cared more about passing required courses than arriving at earth-shattering realizations about the world. It also all largely took place in the freakishly homogeneous confines of a small, well-off liberal arts college (albeit in hapless Michigan). I learned to view the world’s various goings on through those goggles, nonetheless. I would consider myself to be rather idealistic, but I’ve worked to remain grounded in reality in such a way as to keep myself reasonable. Perhaps forever in conflict with the sliding scale.

So it was with great confusion that my various utopian dreams and cynical rebuttals followed me out of school in 2007 -- as happens for class after class, year after year -- and headlong into the much-vaunted ‘real world’ from which there was no escape. I arrived in a land in which jobs no longer served the purpose of occupying oneself during summer vacation (R.I.P.), and set about paying the bills.

A year or so passed, and I found myself in the aforementioned world of hope and optimism versus, at least in part, the straightforward fear of not being able to make ends meet. Like so many of my peers, I grappled with working to be an agent for positive change in the world or working until it was simply time to clock out and go home. To date, I still fall into the latter category, left to wonder whether or not to take a risk for something in which I believe and how big that risk could or should be. I question whether or not it’s even worth investing energy and emotion into a world increasingly dominated by all manner of unproductive and bitter politicking.

Then I remember that I always wanted to work for something other than mere financial stability and accomplish something greater than the bare minimum, and I arrive back at square one, left to struggle with conflicting thoughts until it’s time to get up and go back to work.