A lot of people cried when Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination at last week's Democratic National Convention. After all, this was the first female candidate to ever win the nomination of a major party. So many Democrats backed her because of this. I wanted to -- I wanted to be able to stand behind the first female candidate, but something had happened before the primaries even started to draw my attention away.

I was going through the Internet when I found out about one of the other Democratic contenders, an older senator from Vermont -- whose platform lined up with everything I believed in.

I remember signing up for emails from the Bernie campaign and being so, so excited that there was a candidate I could get so firmly behind in my first presidential election. I signed up to be a volunteer if needed. I read every email I got from the campaign. I was passionate about politics for the first time ever. Everything I believed in, everything I had been saying, was being said by a candidate and it was amazing.

As the Pennsylvania primaries approached, I got more and more excited. I had been asked to go canvass in Michigan and Illinois, but due to classes I couldn't go. I had said, however, that once the campaign got to Pennsylvania and I could help out and still be back in my dorm at night, I would do whatever they needed. I was going to make a difference, even a small one -- I was going to help this man whom I was so passionate about win.

I got my opportunity to do just this when I was told that there was a field office opening up in Erie, the same city my school is in, and I was asked to do a canvassing shift from 3 to 6. However, thanks to my class schedule, I was an hour late. I wasn't going to let that deter me from helping out, however. The office was brand new, so set up was still in progress. I offered to stay and help for as long as they needed me -- that ended up being about 10 hours, after which I was sent home for nearly falling asleep on the floor.

I was back the next day, and the next and the next. In fact, I was back every day until the primaries almost four weeks later, working over 200 hours as the data captain, meaning that I took all the canvassing information and entered it into the computer, entered shifts, marked shifts as complete or any other status -- I did a lot of work on the computer -- as well as anything else Alissa, the person in charge, needed me to do. Most days I was in the office from around 4:20 until at least 10.

The most exciting time in the office was Tuesday the 19th. We had found out on Sunday that Bernie was coming to Erie for a rally, which was happening on Tuesday. It sounds cliche, but the atmosphere at that rally was absolutely electric. I had a surprisingly good view, given that I was one of the last people to go into the room--my volunteer duties extended to the rally, where I was constantly at the back of the line of people waiting to get in so I could tell them about the security procedures.

Of course, for a lot of people their involvement ended after the rally, but we still had work to do. We were going into GOTV -- get out the vote, the last couple days before Election Day. Luckily, Mercyhurst was on break the Thursday and Friday of GOTV, so I could be in all day, and I took off from my classes on Monday and Tuesday. They needed me in the office.

Election Day was pretty insane. I don't remember much about the morning, only catching my bus at an ungodly early hour so I could be in when the office opened. I remember having to do canvass captain duties on top of my data captain duties, and I remember the last hour or so before the polls closed. This was when it was all hands on deck -- everybody had to go out and canvass except for one person who would stay behind and man the office. I ended up being the one staying behind, which meant that I had to be able to answer questions, sell merchandise, send out canvassers, keep track of canvassers, talk to canvassers who came back, and still do my data job. I remember sitting in the bathroom around 8:30 at night, after the polls closed, while there was a group of volunteers in the office watching the returns, and being in tears. It wasn't the results coming in that made me cry -- it was stress. That sounds odd, given that this was after the polls closed and therefore after my job was done. However, it was the first time since before GOTV that I had the time to have a breakdown, so it actually made sense.

My campaign family -- the field organizers, the phone bank captain, the canvass captains, and our core canvassers -- was amazing, as well as many of the canvassers who came in to volunteer. They really were the best part of the whole experience.

The Bernie bid for the presidency may be over, but the spirit embodied in the campaign lives on in everyone who volunteered and everyone who believed in him and his platform and his message. This campaign was bigger than a single candidate, bigger than even a party or the entire political system. This campaign was the start of something new in politics, something setting a fire within the country.