I recently applied for a scholarship, and the topic of the essay was how having a disability has affected my education.

In addition to the link to my application in this article, I'll be expanding on what I said and explaining more about what I believe is happening in our nation. Due to current events over the last couple of years, our society and the way it functions has been repeatedly interrupted by many "quakes", if you will. Just some of those examples (that have strongly influenced the way I think) are the recent debates on illegal immigration, police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement, the protests over the installation of the North Dakota Access Pipeline and one of the most recent and surprising ones of all, the election of Donald Trump.

Communication has never been more important than it will soon be (or maybe even more important than it is right now). Having a basic understanding of each other and communicating clearly with each other have always been critical parts in our society, and especially now, our society seems to be having a bit of trouble with that. Granted, there seem to be very real concerns of citizens of the United States that contributed to voters voting for either Hillary Clinton and/or Donald Trump, but effectively communicating those concerns to the other side of the aisle, that's where a lot of people seem to get tripped up. Starting these discussions will allow many people to learn about their peers' opinions, both those opinions on which people agree and disagree.

From here on out, I'm hoping for the best, that our country will stay on the "straight and narrow", so to speak. Keeping these conversations going is going to be a huge asset, in terms of how our society will handle this transition of power in January.

The founders of our nation said that political parties are bad. It's not that they're bad, but we just need to keep the conversations going, and not get complacent about where our country is (and where it could be going).