Dear President Obama,
While last night’s election results may seem like a referendum on the policies you’ve advocated for over the last two years, I think they are a greater reflection of the fear that so many people feel about this new economic level setting. It can be tempting to voters to think a change of power will bring a change of scene. People want the good ol’ times again, or at least what we thought were good ol’ times.
I graduated from the Darden business school in May 2007 into what my classmates and I thought was an unstoppable economy. 6 months later it was all-to-clear to us that we had built our short-term career aspirations on a tremendously unstable house of cards. We had to rethink those dreams, at least in the short-term. Maybe even delay them a bit or alter them.
But our underlying confidence in our abilities to make positive contributions to the world around us did not waver, and your confidence shouldn’t either. We needed you to take up the seemingly insurmountable challenge of the Presidency two years ago, and we need you now more than ever.
Change worth having takes time to build. There are a lot of people in this country who haven’t lost heart. I haven’t, and I hope you don’t either.
Christa Avampato 