After the four-day dumpster fire the Republicans put on in Cleveland, the Democratic National Convention was just the pick-me-up I needed. Admittedly, it was a little bizarre seeing my party pick up all the feel-good rhetoric about America that the GOP decided to abandon in favor of “Be afraid!”, but if it means we get to have conventions filled with optimism, hope, and top-notch speeches every single night, then count me in.

Among those speeches was probably the last major speech of President Obama’s time in office. It feels strange staring at those words on my computer screen as I type this, but the fact is that six months from now, he won’t be the President anymore. I know for a lot of people, that’s reason to celebrate. He’s certainly inspired rabid anger from his political opponents, both inside and outside the Beltway. I could speculate all day as to why, but that’s not what I’m here to do right now. I’m here to say something very simple.

Thanks, Obama.

I know this isn’t the usual context for that line at all, but I mean this sincerely. Maybe it’s just because he was the right politician in the right place at the right time, but President Obama has been an integral part of not just my political journey, but how I've grown as a person over the past eight years.

Let’s start this off sometime before I’d even heard of the man. When I was ten years old, I remember being in line at a Bank of America and seeing a Presidential campaign ad for Mike Huckabee on the TV they had set up. It was loud, it was full of bluster, and at the end, the ad declared that Huckabee would “abolish the IRS.”

Even as a ten-year-old, my first thought was “Can they do that?” Granted, I knew practically nothing about taxes back then, other than that adults have to pay them every year and that they’re annoying, but surely abolishing the IRS wouldn’t make those taxes go away, would it?

Of course, back then, I wasn’t very knowledgeable about politics in general. What I did know was pretty oversimplified. President George W. Bush was, essentially, a cartoon character who kept screwing up and saying stupid things. Vice President Dick Cheney was a cranky old man who shot some guy in the face. Said President and Vice President had led us into a war in Iraq, and that was bad for some reason. There was also someone named Condoleezza Rice who worked for the President, but I had no idea what she did. Americans were the good guys, and al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Osama Bin Laden were the bad guys. Again, this is all pretty one-dimensional, but I was in fifth grade. Nuance and moral complexities aren’t exactly the average elementary schooler’s forté, especially not when it comes to politics.

But back to that ad. Now, I had no idea what I stood for politically aside from “global warming exists,” which I didn’t realize was a controversial statement back then, but I did know that I didn’t like this Mike Huckabee guy and I didn’t want him to be President. I never saw that advertisement again. But my bad experiences with political ads were far from over.

See, when my family made the morning rounds dropping everyone off for school or word, we would listen to this pop station that played anything from the ‘80’s on. I preferred the alt-rock station, but their morning show took the “less rock, more talk” approach to that time slot, so we had to settle for the pop station. And sometime in spring 2008, I started to notice a pattern with the ads. Namely, they were the same two or three negative campaign ads about candidates and propositions over and over again. I didn’t know what they meant. I didn’t know if I agreed with them or not. All I knew was that I never, ever wanted to hear those ads or anything to do with them ever again. Politics seemed like a nasty business where everyone insulted each other and nobody said what made them any better than the other people in the room. I wanted nothing to do with it.

There was just one problem. It was an election year. Granted, I was in California, so I didn’t have it anywhere near as bad as fellow newly-tired-of-politics kids in swing states, but this crap wasn’t going away any time soon. I was going to see and hear these negative ads for a long time coming. Oh, joy.

By this point, three candidates--Mike Huckabee not included, thankfully--were left in the race. The Republicans had settled on John McCain. I’ll admit, I didn’t learn most of what I know about him until long after that election. What I did know by Election Day was that he was from the same party as Baby Bush and Shooty McShootface, that people in said party liked to run those annoying negative ads on the radio and TV all day long and call their opposition “socialists”--which sounded ridiculous even then, since I’d taken the time to learn some systems of government and what they meant--and that his Vice President was someone named Sarah Palin who always sounded like she had no idea what she was talking about. (As it turned out, nine and a half times out of ten, she didn’t.)

The Democrats, meanwhile, had two options to choose from. In one corner, we had Hillary Clinton. Now, I didn’t know anything of her policies at the time, but I did know my recent Presidents, I did know that she was President Bill Clinton’s wife, and somehow, the office in the West Wing trading off back and forth between two families for over 20 years straight didn’t feel right. So that left me with exactly one candidate to support, a Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama. He was young, he was charismatic, and most importantly of all, his campaign was a lot more optimistic and positive than anyone else in the race. With Obama, I felt like I understood what he was fighting for, not merely who he was fighting against. At that time, that was all I needed.

I’ll admit, I didn’t actually watch extended footage of him speaking until after the election was over and I’d celebrated the fact that he won. But I do clearly remember the day I finally got to do just that. I was in sixth grade, and I had PE during first period. As a special treat, on Inauguration Day, we had the option of either doing PE as usual or staying in the locker room and watching President Obama’s inaugural address. I was one of those who stayed in and watched, partly because I was excited for him and partly because I was in no mood to run laps in the cold.

Even in the moment, I knew I was witnessing the start of something major--and I don’t just mean because it was the first black President’s first speech of his first term. Say what you will about his policies, but Barack Obama knows how to give a masterful speech, and even watching him live on that tiny TV posted high above in a corner of the locker room, I was absolutely locked in, hanging on his every word as he laid out the path ahead. I don't think I'd ever seen a speech that captivating before in my life. Little did I know where those twenty minutes would eventually lead me.

After that speech, I decided to get more engaged in the political process. I began seriously following current events at home and abroad, engaging with the issues and the underlying philosophical principles that drove them. I stopped picking who I wanted to win elections based on who didn’t drive me crazy with their ads and started actually researching the candidates, their parties, and what they stood for. I joined Model UN in 7th grade, then moved up to Youth & Government in high school, and my experiences in those programs helped shape me as a person and exposed me to new perspectives I never even knew existed. I not only found causes to stand for, from green energy to social justice to criminal justice reform, I also found myself in the process. Without someone like Barack Obama, without a new President who genuinely inspired me and stood apart from all the negativity that my first impressions of politics showed me, I don’t know if I’d have ever gotten into politics at all--and without that, many of the most impactful moments and friendships of my life would never have happened.

Of course, over the years, I came to see the issues a little differently from President Obama. For one, I disagree with him on the TPP, thanks to the vast power it gives corporations to run roughshod over signatory nations’ laws and its problematic provisions on environmental regulations and copyright laws. I also have my concerns with his civil liberties record, especially with regard to his signing off on an extension of the PATRIOT Act and how he’s handled the Edward Snowden situation. But that’s only natural. In my experience, the only people who agree with their political heroes on 100% of the issues are either caught up in a cult of personality or their own personal favorites.

And now that Obama’s time in the Oval Office is almost over, now that he’s endorsed Hillary Clinton as (hopefully) the next person to take up the torch, it might be a while before I get another chance to say this and have the timing feel right.

So, from the bottom of my heart, thanks, Obama. Thanks for cleaning up the mess the guy before you left behind. Thanks for taking a step in the right direction on health care reform and helping millions of Americans get insurance. Thanks for repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Thanks for being the first sitting President to publicly support gay marriage. Thanks for normalizing our relationship with Cuba and negotiating a landmark deal with Iran. Thanks for taking a diplomacy-first, “don’t do stupid stuff” approach to foreign policy. Thanks for standing tall against a rising tide of vitriol and paranoia from the other side of the aisle. Thanks for breaking down barriers and paving the way for more people of color to one day take residence in the White House.

And most of all, thanks for being the beacon of positivity and hope that lit up the path away from cynicism and apathy and towards the people and places that helped make me who I am today.