Where Do I Start?

      Following politics has never been an interest of mine; quite the opposite actually.  I’ve listened to people debate issues formally and casually and honestly it’s a bit hard to follow because I haven’t paid attention to what each party stands for, who represents each party, what each candidates’ experience, education, and affiliation are.  What are the issues plaguing our country, how are they affecting individuals, businesses, families?  What can be done about them and what are the pros and cons for each possibility?  There seems an endless amount of information to try to decipher.  So where do I start?

      Taking the advice of my government instructor, Professor Scott, I took the civics quiz online offered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and another online quiz offered by the Center for the People & the Press to determine my political typology.  First I took the civics quiz and I scored 72%.  Yikes… that is the kind of grade that I normally cringe at but then I read that “the average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%.”  So now I’m thinking, hmm - not too shabby.  There is hope for me yet.  Then I took the typology quiz and out of eight categories ranging from “staunch conservative” all the way down to “bystander” I fell smack in the middle at something called “post-modern.”  I have included the helpful list of bullet descriptions under my profile.  So it seems that I have some basic knowledge about our government with the ability to build on that, and I have some opinions that I could use as a starting point to start to learn about the different political parties and their candidates.  Actually, this is good news to me and I’m feeling pretty good.