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• On inauguration

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Do you hear that? It's the sound of millions of toes curled, the delighted exhale following the inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama, a day so positive the bitter excesses of the past eight years seem distant. Some of us were counting down the days until the end of Bush's term well before this mammoth election cycle even began, some of us hitched our wagon to one candidate or another during that cycle, while others were convinced only weeks or days before election day.

And while I couldn't make it out to the District for this incredible celebration, I was part of the group euphoria of Grant Park a few months ago, when anyone who doubted America as place of all things possible had those cynical views smashed before the world. Our democracy spoke then, and today it was realized, 1.20.08 —a date we will all have etched into our minds for the rest of our lives. Our kids will ask us where we were when our generation made its will manifest on a national scale, when America discarded the language of fear and embraced that of hope; that is unless you were in your first class of the semester, learning about courts rather than witnessing history.

I'll allow other, much more qualified members of the commentariat wax philosophical upon the preponderances of today's historic speech; instead, please note the mass excitement here in our own community, the university of the state which just gave away its finest son to the nation; the tumblogs detailing Michelle's beautiful dress and the outbursts on the Quad, an extra shot of excitement on the first frigid day of class. Indeed, in Barack we project the better qualities of ourselves, the collegian intellectual, a person as calculating as he is compassionate, someone who we hope will bring the spirit of the Land of Lincoln to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The paradigm has shifted. Now the hard part comes. And as our generations twitters and books faces over the historic moment, we must not confine our compassion and our glorious citizenship to cyberspace, but instead go out into the country, into the world and put hope, change and the other memes into action. Just like other great things in life, contended sighs are preceded by hardworking grunts.