By Ryan Dolan, Kansas delegate

Eli and I are both 33, and have known each other since we were in sixth grade. This is the first political convention we’ve attended. Eli is an alternate delegate for the state of Kansas. I volunteered weekly answering phones during the entire primary season at the Obama Campaign HQ in Chicago, where I’m an actor and writer. After a busy summer, I hope to return to volunteering after Labor Day. It’s safe to say, we’re both amazed to be at Denver at the Democratic Convention.

After 10 years as an C-130 pilot in the Air Force, Eli left the service. He moved with his wife, Erin, to Fairway, KS, a suburb of Kansas City where we grew up. After experiencing first-hand the mismanaged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Eli and Erin started community organizing for the Obama campaign in October of 2007. They knocked on a lot of doors, attended lots of meetings, and met a lot of amazing people. They both ended up being precinct captains for Obama in Johnson County for their precinct’s caucus. On a bleak night with a blizzard raging outside, their precinct had 2,500 people show up when they only expected 400. One thousand of them were registered Republicans who re-registered as Democrats. Together, with the other volunteers from the Obama and Clinton campaigns, they worked hard to make sure every vote was counted that night.

On a cold day in late November, I walked into an Obama call center in Chicago. I’d followed politics for awhile, and was not happy with the direction our country was headed. I finally got over the fear of calling people, and started volunteering. Soon, I moved over to answering phone calls in the Obama headquarters. I did this from Iowa caucus to Puerto Rico primary. I’m sure Eli had an amazing experience talking to people face-to-face and hearing their stories and discussing about why he liked Obama. I, too, felt lucky to speak with people from all over the country, some not enamored with Obama or his platform, and hear their opinions and stories and converse with them. It was an incredible learning experience.

As you ride the buses or trains into downtown Denver for the convention, people are eager to strike up conversations and find out where you’re from. I was telling a Hawaiian delegate on the way back to the hotel tonight, that there were many cold Chicago nights, (Texas caucus night really stands out to me) where I would trudge from the Obama headquarters to the El, and ride it back to my apartment, and think the primary season would never end.

It’s so amazing to Eli and myself, then, to be here at the convention to see the culmination of a years worth of campaigning and work come to fruition. I donated a small bit of money to Obama the day he announced his candidacy in Springfield, Ill. Eli knocked on countless doors as soon as he came back from his honeymoon last fall. Here we are now attending caucus/policy meetings during the day, or listen to politicians, like Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana, address us at breakfast. Eli attends at the speeches at night. We both will be at the football stadium to hear Obama’s speech Thursday.

Whether it’s the candidate or the direction of our country or a combination of both, we are just two of the many young adults who have become politically active for the first time in their life this year. Kansas alone has two 18-year-old elected delegates, who did a ton of grassroots organizing. Eighteen years old! When I was 18, I didn’t know what a delegate was. It’s not just democrats, however, who feel a personal responsibility to make a difference in the country. My cousin, Pat, a Republican from a small town in Iowa, became an officer in the Navy this past year. I know many people whose siblings have joined the military in the past couple of years out of a sense of duty to the country. It’s not just the military, of course, thousands of young people are going into teaching, mentoring, and other forms of public service.

When Obama speaks on Thursday night, I have a feeling there will be tears in my eyes and in many of my friends’ eyes all across the country. They will be tears of pride, joy, and disbelief after a long fight. There will be tears, because we don’t like where our country is headed, and we did a small part to try to get our country back on track. We’re in Denver, because we love the United States of America, and we’re determined that the country we learned about in grade school is the country we’re going to pass on to future generations. We want to live in America that is the shining beacon of the world again. The America that leads by example. Don’t believe the press and pundits. There’s no anxiety in Denver. There’s only hope and excitement for a better tomorrow. Yet, after a year of campaigning, our work has just begun.